First time brewing
- Thread starter jon
- Start date
-
Love Gotmead and want to see it grow? Then consider supporting the site and becoming a Patron! If you're logged in, click on your username to the right of the menu to see how as little as $30/year can get you access to the patron areas and the patron Facebook group and to support Gotmead!
-
We now have a Patron-exclusive Facebook group! Patrons my join at The Gotmead Patron Group. You MUST answer the questions, providing your Patron membership, when you request to join so I can verify your Patron membership. If the questions aren't answered, the request will be turned down.
See if you can find a local beekeeper willing to sell you on a quart basis (about 3 pounds which is what you'll want for a sweet mead) instead of buying it in pound-sized jars. Maybe you can find someone who's got a bit too much honey to use, but not quite enough to sell at market, and is happy to do a "farm gate" sale. Maybe you can find a small beekeeper willing to barter.
Hawaii has many bee clubs; if you don't know a beekeeper, then try and get in touch with one through the clubs. I run the Finger Lakes Beekeepers Club in New York and when we get these requests I always forward them to our members.
Personally, I think that if you want to make mead, you need to use honey. It's not just the sugars that turn your honey into wine, but the floral flavors of the honey inform the finished mead. Orange blossom honey makes a different mead than goldenrod honey. Even from my own bee yard, the meads I make off of my spring honeys taste different than my fall honey meads.
Nothing to contribute, just off topic: Jon's prices are about the same as mine, at least from local folks or imported in bulk by the LHBS. If I dare try shipping it on my own then the price bumps up to $10/pound for most varieties. One of life's major downsides to living in one of the non-contiguous areas of the US.
There's really no 'substitute' for honey. Mead is mead because it's from fermented honey as opposed to rye, grapes, corn, etc.
That being said, you CAN use brown sugar as an adjunct in both mead and beer. I have a cyser recipe that uses 2lb honey and 1lb brown sugar in apple juice (fforone gallon).
.
That being said, you CAN use brown sugar as an adjunct in both mead and beer. I have a cyser recipe that uses 2lb honey and 1lb brown sugar in apple juice (fforone gallon).
.
percentages
If you want to substitute honey for sugar it's worth remembering that in an average honey only about 70-75% is actually fermentable sugar (the rest is water with a bit of protein present as well)....therefore 1 lb of honey would not give you the same amount of fermentable sugar as 1 lb of actual refined sugar. So, if you want to substitute you need to allow for this in your calculations or you risk ending up with something sweeter and/or stronger than you desire
If you want to substitute honey for sugar it's worth remembering that in an average honey only about 70-75% is actually fermentable sugar (the rest is water with a bit of protein present as well)....therefore 1 lb of honey would not give you the same amount of fermentable sugar as 1 lb of actual refined sugar. So, if you want to substitute you need to allow for this in your calculations or you risk ending up with something sweeter and/or stronger than you desire
Well, I was just looking at Beefolks website and at 260$US, plus 115$US, and then just as a guesstimate using a generic Honolulu ZIP, it did work out at about 6.90$ per lb using the cheapest price for sensible parcel shipping (as far as I could work out).
Fair enough, but as it translates to about £3.90 here, it's higher than some varietals, but not the highest price. About mid-range for a decent varietal, so over all, not bad IMO - but that's relative isn't it.
I'm thinking that food prices are likely a bit higher here than generally found in the US, so maybe that works out proportionally higher in the Islands......
And those numbers were worked out using a 5 gallon bucket price........
There's farming etc on the Islands, so surely it must be possible to use one of the ideas of trying to hook up with a local bee keeper ?
Fair enough, but as it translates to about £3.90 here, it's higher than some varietals, but not the highest price. About mid-range for a decent varietal, so over all, not bad IMO - but that's relative isn't it.
I'm thinking that food prices are likely a bit higher here than generally found in the US, so maybe that works out proportionally higher in the Islands......
And those numbers were worked out using a 5 gallon bucket price........
There's farming etc on the Islands, so surely it must be possible to use one of the ideas of trying to hook up with a local bee keeper ?
Hmmmm i have to check to make sure, but I think that SueBee honey is about 7 bucks a pound at the local grocery store here in Miami Beach... so it's not that crazy expensive. But I may be wrong.
I'd suspect that its gonna depend on how much the food fascists can extract from the local areas, depending on demographic etc.....
A bit harder to work out from this distance
Yes. I should be a good "gotmeader" and be at the grocery store right now but alas, it's 5:25pm here in Miami and you know what that means:
Hey! That's an empty pint!!!
That's better.
Hey! That's an empty pint!!!
That's better.
