Mead recipe please

[wilderness]

I used 3lbs honey plus some cappings to a gallon.

Sounds like I'm a bit light on the honey. I guess I could add another pound of honey to the current mix and warm a bit?

 

[Nellie]

I just copied the recipe I was given but I also think that 3lb per gallon isn't enough based on the whole two times I've tried making mead. Might amend the original recipe as posted up to 4lbs. Last thing I want is people ending up with a bland mead at the end. I suspect I was closer to 5lbs of honey in this batch but was very imprecise on honey/water calculations.

 

[Vergilius]

My friend and I have got some old honey stored in a bucket from 3 years ago when it spilt on the kitchen floor and was therefore unsuitable to consume or sell. Could this still be used for mead?



Ben P

 

[oliver90owner]

I just re-read post #11 where Wilderness said:


Have I made a mistake by not boiling and presumably killing off wild yeasts?

I would certainly not be boiling it. 65 would kill off most and ~80 is pasteurising temperature (flash heating and cooling?)

But there again, I'm not a wine or mead maker.

Where is Rosti when we need him?

My thought is that one needs a very 'floral' rather than a bland OSR honey, and therefore as much as one can get in there for the bestest and strongest without finishing with a too sweet product.

I undestand that mead is even more hit and miss than many wine recipes? A good one is very good and a bad one is awful? Is this what people on here find?

Regards, RAB

 

[Poly Hive]

Yes Ben.

PH

 

[the naked beekeeper]

Yes Ben.

PH

Let's have your recipe then Mr PH!

 

[Hombre]

Ben, you could feed that honey back to the bees next year in a feeder and have them re-store a lot of it for you. It should then become fit for human consumption once again. The bees will take their cut of course.

 

[Poly Hive]

Ok. I put in four pounds per gallon of Heather honey, heated it until the scum formed and skimmed.

Made ten gallons at a time in two 5 gallon fermenters.

Made up yeast starter the day before and made sure they were highly active before adding to the cool must.

Waited until fermented out, which could take three weeks or on one case 6 damn months..

Never bothered with bottling, just dipped the glass into the drum... oops too much info.. LOL

Found that two identical batches often proceeded at very different speeds, and also found it wise not to give up on it. Eventually it works out.

PH

 

[the naked beekeeper]

Ok. I put in four pounds per gallon of Heather honey, heated it until the scum formed and skimmed.

Wowser! That must be some damn good mead! Was the honey, super honey or from cappings??

Made ten gallons at a time in two 5 gallon fermenters.

Made up yeast starter the day before and made sure they were highly active before adding to the cool must.

Any advice on what type of yeast/brand??

Waited until fermented out, which could take three weeks or on one case 6 damn months..

Never bothered with bottling, just dipped the glass into the drum... oops too much info.. LOL

Found that two identical batches often proceeded at very different speeds, and also found it wise not to give up on it. Eventually it works out.

Interesting.

PH

..

 

[Poly Hive]

It was extracted honey, clean and ready to bottle.

Yeast was a high alcohol type, and the end product was usually round the 17% Alcohol mark.

PH

 

[chrismcd]

Having studied brewing microbiology, being scottish and naturally lazy I have a low effort technique I can suggest for comparison.

Firstly - use the washings from cleaning your extraction equipment. if you use warm water to rinse the extractor into the filters and then into the buckets you can probably recover about a pound of honey that would otherwise go down the drain. Little and often recovers the honey with the least dilution and it cheers up a boring task.

Secondly - do not sterilise it. I am persuaded that there are all sorts of goodies in honey that are destroyed by heating and I hate the taste of sulphur dioxide. All equipement should be cleaned and then given a final rinse with tap water. Your ferment is most definitely not sterile, but the real danger is adding a dose of vinegar bacteria that have been lurking in the bottom of some old kit that was not properly cleaned last time round!

Thirdly - no measuring of weights or volumes, just use a hydrometer to get the specific gravity above at least 1.085. If you are not sterilising you need to give the yeast as much of a competitive advantage as possible so the liquor needs to be nice and sugary.

Fourthly - give a massive overdose of your chosen yeast. I use champagne yeast that I have started in a properly sterilised bottle well before I start to extract my honey. Make up at least a litre and make sure it is working well before it is added to the brew. You want it to take over immediately! Not all yeasts ferment to alcohol. Some go to polysaccharides ( wall paper paste anyone?) and I had one beer fermentation that produced a foam like polystyrene.

Fifthly - make sure the yeast is fed. I agree with the argument that honey is lacking in protein. I use yeast nutrient, but am very taken with a previous posters suggestion of marmite. I do know that yeast loves vitamins and organic acids - my old tutor swore by malic acid from apples but citric and ascorbic ( Vitamin C) also seem to work well.

Sixthly - keep the yeast happy. Warm, no changes in temperature, no drafts and regular feeding with more honey ( not too much or you can give it osmotic shock).

As a further cost saving, I use 2L PET pop bottles with the bubblers glued in with hot glue. Cheaper and easier to clean than demijohns and less dangerous than glass if you do misjudge it and let them explode.

My mead making is basically tied onto the end of cleaning up the honey extraction. All you need is a yeast culture, a hydrometer and some old pop bottles to get a real bonus.

Now, can someone suggest an easy way to clarify it apart from letting it stand for a year?

 

[Poly Hive]

NEVER use warm water in cleaning extraction equipment. You will make a serious rod for your own back... the wax will be a nightmare to get off.

PH

 

[chrismcd]

NEVER use warm water in cleaning extraction equipment. You will make a serious rod for your own back... the wax will be a nightmare to get off.

PH

I know what you mean, I used to have real problems with getting all the wax out. I use water warm enough to ease the dissolving of the honey, but not hot enough to soften the wax or degrade the honey.

Also, I have now switched to using a hot air gun for uncapping, it dramatically reduces the amount of wax in the extraction kit and makes cleaning it a lot easier.

 

[Poly Hive]

There are two good reasons for "deep uncapping".

Bear in mind I used Manley frames so there is a substantial amount of honey in my cappings when I extracted. Hence my spin drier trick.

However reason one is it gives the wax workers work to keep them from playing with building queen cells.... and generally idling and losing queen substance and so on.

The other is wax it's self. Very useful source of income is wax esp when turned in to value added products such as polish and candles.

Which is why I am not keen on the hot air gun technique.

PH

 

[oliver90owner]

P H,

Very useful source of income is wax

If you have it (for one of your reasons above), I would agree.

But, when you consider it costs 'about five times it's weight in honey' or more, for it's production, I feel it is not particularly worth encouraging unless it can be sold at 'specialised' candle prices. Not done much in the way of costing them out, but I do like messing around with the odd candle mould for christmas prezzies or such like.

So, do you have any costings?

Regards, RAB

 

[Poly Hive]

Yes Rab.

As you seem in picky mood as the post above was actually a copy and paste from another thread from weeks ago.

10 years ago I was selling 35 grams of wax at 90p which gives a cost of £25.71 per kilo or for easier working £11-69 per lb.

At the time it was worth more to me in clean form than traded for foundation. A deal I always thought suspect and never did.

However with the right equipment wax is easy to work, and I have it, made to my design, the video is on the site.

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/video.php?do=viewdetails&videoid=67

http://www.beekeepingforum.co.uk/video.php?do=viewdetails&videoid=68

As for uncapping, I firmly believe in it, as did all my mentors. Wax workers are better employed in producing wax as comb than as queen cells.

PH

 

[Poly Hive]

Just done a bit of research here.

Thornes are saying for 1lb of wax they will give you 3 and 3/4 sheets of National brood. Their standard foundation sells at £7-62 per ten sheets so as they round up their sheets, very generous of them one pound of the beekeeprs wax is worth they say, £3-05 or 76.2p times 4.

Generous hmm?

I would like some one to check my calc but as far as I can see that is what it works out at.

So my £11 odd per pound as candles ten years ago is not looking so very dusty?

10 years ago I was selling 35 grams of wax at 90p which gives a cost of £25.71 per kilo or for easier working £11-69 per lb.

At the time it was worth more to me in clean form than traded for foundation. A deal I always thought suspect and never did.

PH

 

[oliver90owner]

Not in picky mood. Just asking for some justification. You don't tell us how much you sold 5 times as much (or more) honey then.

I was actually agreeing with you re the bees having to make wax, if necessary for swarm prevention, just not as an alternative to honey. Still not convinced that the honey loss is worth less than the wax produced.

For some, honey is a fiver a jar (454g), so thats 25 quid per equivalent weight of wax?

And we see on the other thread that Th*rne are selling bulk wax for much, much less....

RAB

 

[Poly Hive]

Ok. First of all we have to assume that the five times factor is actually true.

Secondly I prefer to have a bit less honey, and no swarming. If my wax workers are busy then they are distracted from swarming mode.

There is my justification, and as I was running AMM at the time and they were very keen on supercedure as opposed to being swarmy it all worked very well indeed. Roughly 40% swarmy and the rest supercedure on year two or three.

Rarely four but yes it happened.

PH

 

[oliver90owner]

First of all we have to assume that the five times factor is actually true.

Do you have an alternative value? All the books/papers I have read seem to go for around a ratio of 5:1 and some say it can be 4 times that 'at some times in the year'.

Regards, RAB