Not to argue but the information you provide below is incorrect. It
should read something like this instead ;

http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2002/NEW00831.html

The Chinese honey was being dumped (low prices) on the US market (not
dumped because of the contamination) and as a result of the illegal
'dumping and the contamination the honey was not allowed to be sold o
nthe US market.

anyway….

mead-request@talisman.com wrote:

> Honey is high this year for a couple of reasons. China is a large supplier
> of "industrial" honey, and they shipped over a bunch that was contaminated
> with anti-biotics. This had to be dumped, and greatly lowered the supply.

>

> In addition, last summer sucked for honey production in many areas. Rainy,
> overcast days do not make for great honey production, and that's exactly
> what a large portion of the country experienced last summer. This made
> domestic production low, as well.

>

> I say pass the brew-shop by for honey, and look for a local apiary.

I agree. If you can find it. I unfortunatley need 10,000 lbs a year.

Mike

>>Or you could put 275 gals honey, 600 gallons of water in the brew kettle
>>and heat to 160, hold for 15 mins and pump through the heat exchanger at
>> 65Deg F

>>

>>Mike 🙂

> >

> Mike,

>

> You've got me wondering…

>

> In a microbrewery, it's usually manpower (and a shovel) that moves the grain
> from sacks or a large hopper into the crusher, and sometimes from the
> crusher into the mashtun, if the crusher doesn't feed into the mashtun. How
> do you move 275 gallons of honey from whatever storage facility you have for
> it, into your brew kettle? I'm guessing it's not by shovel! 😉

High viscocity eccentric worm gear pump. 5 gals per minute at 250psi
positive displacement.

I'll post pics later.

Mike

>I have always held the opinion that mead shouldn't be like wine — wine is
>too acidic, grassy, buttery, vegetal, pineappley, asparagus-like, etc.

If you're drinking wine that is buttery, vegetal, or asparagus-like,
you're drinking BAD wine.

I've said this many, many times. Mead is wine, honey wine. It is not
beer. I questioned early and often since passing the BJCP exam why
mead is even part of the BJCP style guidelines, which are for beer.
Jeez, sake is closer to beer than mead is, and the BJCP doesn't
have even have a category for that. So I still question the inclusion
of mead as a "style of beer". It is wine. Always was, always will be.

Bill

My daughter, age 6, the budding chef. She's been watching
Emeril Lagasse's programs and got inspired. This morning
she proudly told me she had made up her own recipe, a
combination of chocolate chips and butter, melted together.
She and Mom had been dipping apple slices in it last night.

After I dropped her off at school this morning, I grabbed a
few strawberries at the local grocery store and a small bottle
of Port (I'm a third shift worker, so even though it's morning,
it's evening for me). Wow! This is really good stuff. The
strawberries, chocolate dip, and Port all come together in
wonderful ways.

Another venture, this one into mead cuisine, was with a mead
vinegar made by Chuck Wettergreen. Mead vinegars have been
described in the literature as having an especially good aroma
and flavor, and this vinegar certainly lived up to that reputation.
The tarragon sprig added an extra touch. Very nice, exceptional
flavor and aroma, some residual sweetness remaining from the
mead made this really unique.

The residual sweetness made it ideal for a marinade. I let a chicken
breast soak in that good mead vinegar for a good long time, seared
the chicken briefly in a pan, then let it simmer, covered, with the rest
of the marinade along with some minced shallot. Remove the chicken,
an added splash of traditional mead to deglaze the pan. The chicken
juices, mead marinade, and traditional mead shallot, simmered and
reduced, along with the minced shallot, made a wonderful sauce.
I had this on brown rice. A small salad rounded it off. My oh my,
that was good.

There it is! A very simple recipe, easy to prepare, and a truly
excellent meal.

Has anyone else found unique combinations of various meads,
melomels, metheglyns, etc.? How did they work together?

In a round about sort of way, talking about mead and food pairings
is also talking about mead "oenology." The tannins, acids, sweetness,
and various flavors of wine work together in particular ways with
particular foods. There are good reasons why my daughter's
chocolate recipe worked well with strawberries and Port, the
kind of reasons oenologists talk about. This is an unexplored
area in meadmaking, but looking at certain pairings of particular
meads with particular foods would help provide clues here.

How about it? Any other mead chefs out there?

<><><><><><><><><><>
<><><><><><><><>

Dan McFeeley

Rick,

The good news is that apparently you got a real pH meter (not a gadget)
The bad news is that it is a little more demanding to use/maintain

1) it is critical to store in the solution otherwise you may damage your
probe
2) your pH "samples" are buffer solutions. They are pretty stable if not
contaminated by bacteria. You would know if they are off if your pH starts
drifting badly from what it is supposed to be (yet you will not notice
small changes). I can't give you a time estimate but I would not keep them
more than 6 months assuming good conditions.
3) You can use any (clean) container for your solution (preferably glass
or plastic). By definition, buffer solutions are not very sensitive to
dilution (much less than "regular" solutions) but they still are if you
dilute too much so you should use the solution as is – otherwise you may
be slightly off.
Note that for wine/mead/beer you don't need to be extremely precise (4.1
would be as good as 4.2) but it defeats the purpose of using a precise
instrument if it's to compromise the precision by biasing the calibration.

enjoy your new toy
Vince

Just wondering if anyone had ever made a banana mead,
and if so how it turned out.

Also, if you've made one you've liked, do you have a
recipe to share?

Thanks!
Melinda