Hello all

[maynard]

Sheesh -- $10/pound?? Maybe you can retire into beekeeping!

Since you want to get the most bang for your honey, your cappings are your best friend. Wash your cappings in a 5-gallon bucket, in about 3 gallons of water. Strain that cappings wash into a clean bucket through a regular kitchen strainer. The resulting must looks muddy, probably has a bit of wax floating around -- none of that will hurt the final mead. Test it with your hydrometer and you'll find that you are well on your way to a good SG for a primary ferment, without using a drop of your market honey.

You'll need to add more honey to the must, but that can come from your uncapping tank and not the "market" tank. Get the campdens in, then pitch your yeast as soon as you can. Otherwise it'll start fermenting on its own, and you'll have adventures in wild yeast ferments.

As far as the wife not liking a straight, commercial mead... it might be the mead. I find the commercial show meads to be FAR less interesting than a homebrew. Hopefully she'll give your experiments a second chance!

I've only had one person balk at $10 a pound. Everybody else has been thrilled to pay it. I think they were skeptical at first, but after discovering the difference between store bought and real local honey, come back and tell me how much they love it.

And that was for a light amber wildflower honey that I thought was just O.K. If I get another crop of this wonderful white/yellow honey that I've gotten before from the fall harvest, I'll cream it to prevent crystallization and likely get $15/lb for it.

I'm sure I could sell it all at a lower price, but I'd rather slowly expand the market of customers that would pay a high price and make mead with anything I can't sell, than cut the price and get rid of all the honey for the same amount of money. I'd rather sell 50#s at 10/# and have 50# left over to do what I want with, than sell it all at $5/#. In fact, I think the end profit would be better, because I'd only have to buy half as many containers.

I do plan on retiring into beekeeping at some point.

Thanks for the thoughts on the cappings, although I usually strain them into the same tank as the market honey, so there probably isn't much more than a 1/4 cup per super left trapped in the cappings. All the honey from the uncapping tank gets strained into the bottling tank and get's sold right along with everything else.

 

[WVMJack]

Also trying to encourage beeks to look at that dark honey in the wax melter as value added and sell to meadmakers as a bochet style honey. I got 5 gal of Russian olive honey for 10$ GALLON because people around here like lite honey, anything dark or strong scares them, first I have to develop a taste for this stuff, might be headed to the bochet tanks. WVMJ

 

[Kakalakee]

I had very dark honey from my first year hives this year - probably because the #1 nectar source in my area is tulip poplar trees. I have a sweet mead going right now with 12 lbs of it - I'll be interested to see how it turns out. One thing for sure - it's going to take a lot longer to clear not having used commercially produced and refined honey...

 

[GntlKnigt1]

Super Clear takes care of that

 

[mannye]

I had very dark honey from my first year hives this year - probably because the #1 nectar source in my area is tulip poplar trees. I have a sweet mead going right now with 12 lbs of it - I'll be interested to see how it turns out. One thing for sure - it's going to take a lot longer to clear not having used commercially produced and refined honey...

Not necessarily. I use unfiltered organic honey all the time and it clears well enough. Not well enough that I don't hit it with finings anyway, but I can see that if I were to wait 12 or so months, I would have a clear mead. Which is, I'm told, typical for traditional meads.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Actually it doesn't necessarily follow that a more purified honey will clear faster after fermentation. Same as clear apple juice won't clear any faster than cloudy cider when you ferment it... The more particles there are in a must, the more likely they are to run into each other and stick together so they settle out faster, this is why the folks who've done experiments fermenting on stirplates report that the mead clears up unbelievably quickly, so many particle collisions... Adding a fining agent is essentially adding MORE particles that have a charge on them so they attract the oppositely-charged particles that refuse to bang into each other...

 

[maynard]

Here we go!

Well, the process has begun. Over the next couple of days, I'll be placing escape boards to clear supers at 3 different locations, and am looking at 3 medium 8 frame supers, and 2 warre boxes full for what should be somewhere in the 130lbs of honey range. Escape boards are basically bee mazes that allow bees to exit boxes, but not reenter them. I'll probably be spinning and crushing on Monday night.

I'd like to wait more, but it'll be first average frost soon in my area, and I may need to boost winter stores for the bees, and want to make sure that I have time to do it.

Busy weekend coming up with apple harvest and pressing, and honey harvest.

Still thinking of just doing the 1 gallon JAOM at first, so I don't spend a bunch of money on carboy's etc. for something the wife may not like. Although I do have to admit that the BOMM sounds tempting. Ah well, at least the honey will keep for a bit while I'm sorting out the apples. I think that the cider is going to have to come first.

 

[WVMJack]

Maynard, make a cyser, you going to press a bunch of apples anyway for cider, 4 gallons of cider and a gallon or a little less of honey depending on how strong you want to make it, or 3 quarts of cider and a quart of honey or a little less. You can even just hand crush some Warre comb into the cider directly without extracting it. Get to it man before you use up all your cider. WVMJ

 

[joemirando]

Just a word to the wise here. Don't judge all mead by one offering from one producer.

I've 'sampled' (heh heh, yeah, right. "sampled") every mead I could find for sale and afford. My favorite by far is my own traditional. It was reminiscent of a white wine, but 'different'. It was nothing like the offerings from commercial vendors.

You CAN, of course, make a JAOM, and I would highly recommend you do so. But you might want to think about also making another side by side with it. Yeah, I know, its more money for equipment and supplies, but you're only talking about 20 or 30 bucks (for 1 gallon jug, airlock/stopper/wine yeast and hydrometer) to make an honest ta' goodness traditional mead. And with your own honey, it'd be amazing. Hell, with store brand honey, I had people offering me cold, hard cash to make as much as I could for them ("I'll pay you anything you want for a case of this stuff! I mean it!"). Now, I have no intention of selling what I make, but damn its good to hear that kind of thing.

Whether you make a JAOM, a traditional, both, or something else, welcome to the addiction!


Joe

 

[Shelley]

Just a word to the wise here. Don't judge all mead by one offering from one producer.

I've 'sampled' (heh heh, yeah, right. "sampled") every mead I could find for sale and afford. My favorite by far is my own traditional. It was reminiscent of a white wine, but 'different'. It was nothing like the offerings from commercial vendors.

I've found the exact same thing, and have thought about it quite a bit. To me, there seemed no reason why a commercial mead should be less exciting than a homebrew -- and I keep hearing how homebrewed trad meads pop more than commercial. The one exception was a straight OB from B Nektar -- that was really good. When you stray into pyments, cysers, mels... the balance sometimes swings to the commercials (or at least it gets a lot closer).

Then it hit me. When you make a lot of mead (and I mean on a commercial level) you need a lot of honey. Which probably means you need to blend the honey from several sources, so you lose the varietal uniqueness that makes a mead really stand out. The OB is an exception, since there's a reliable and large source of OB honey available from pollination in orchards.

There are other factors that play into favorites like controlling the sweetness, alcohol content, etc, but for just plain flavor, I think that having a single source honey really benefits a trad. When you start adding things to the mead, the additive tends to dominate, so the honey source steps into the background.

 

[mannye]

It's also that mead is kind of where beer was 30 or 40 years ago and although it is difficult to imagine that it will ever get to a "beer level" market acceptance, I can imagine a "cider level" market penetration for mead in the next decade or so.

Where mead is different from beer is that it isn't the most popular alcoholic drink in the country like beer was 40 years ago. But where it is the same is that the majority of mead that's available (chaucers for example) is about as distinctive as Budweiser prompting people to make their own.

No need to make your own beer anymore unless you just like it as a hobby.


Sent from my galafreyan transdimensional communicator 100 years from now.

 

[maynard]

I certainly have thought of the cyser route. Apples are all picked, and now all of a sudden, we can't get a hold of the person we were supposed to borrow the press from. Argh. Apples may end up in sauce this year.

All the supers (and one warre box) are pulled, and the warre is crushed and straining as of last night. There's a lot of pollen in it. It's fairly cloudy. Flavor's decent though. I don't think I'd be able to sell this at $10/lb, so I'd guess this will end up as mead.
Although one coworker has already said that they consider the high pollen to be a plus. Maybe I'll charge more for it!

What are y'alls thoughts about using cloudy (from pollen) honey? Do you think it would end up settling out with the lees?

By the way, I'm loving the discussion that's happening in this thread in general.

 

[Shelley]

I think it's worth a shot marketing it as "high pollen honey", especially if you can pinpoint the time of year the honey came in. A LOT of folks believe that eating pollen-containing honey helps alleviate allergies.

 

[Medsen Fey]

Pollen is an excellent yeast nutrient, and a high-pollen honey will ferment and clear well.

 

[icedmetal]

Question for you: why did you crush your comb honey? Comb honey is worth double what extracted honey is, at least around where I live. Not uncommon to see a 4"x4" square go for $20.

Now that's done though, yes, that pollen will do nothing but help a mead, and would probably get some allergic folks excited as well.

 

[maynard]

I gave a taste to somebody that was interested, and she said "Whoa, I've eaten straight pollen before, and it tastes like you mixed honey and pollen together". I don't think she's interested. I think the people who I manage the hive for (half of the honey will be theirs) will like it since they do it because of their belief in consuming pollen to aid allergies, but I think it's going to be a hard sell for anybody else. I'll sample out a bit more to get some reactions, but I suspect I'll have about a gallon of mead honey from the Warre.

icedmetal:

When you make and sell comb honey, generally you want to make sure that the wax and the cappings are nice and soft and bright white. This comes from applying and removing supers at just the right time during the year so that they fill up and cap the supers, and then don't have a bunch of time for the wax to get harder, and the cappings to get darker from bees walking on it (travel stain). Also, you have to be sure that the comb has NEVER had brood in it. This was a warre box that had been on since spring and has had several generations of brood in it before being filled with honey, not to mention cells packed with pollen. The cappings were very dark. Nobody would pay very much, if anything, for that kind of comb honey.

Medsen: That's encouraging. It's my understanding that pollen is bees primary source of protein. Is protein something that yeast requires as a nutrient?

 

[kudapucat]

Yeast needs a few things, but primarily nitrogen.
MultiVitamin Tablets are said to assist too.
According to the site I posted below, bee pollen is full of everything good. A vitamin blast.
It's no wonder the yeasties like it. I'm not sure how much assimable nitrogen it has though.
http://www.envirobee.com/beepollen2.htm

 

[Medsen Fey]

Medsen: That's encouraging. It's my understanding that pollen is bees primary source of protein. Is protein something that yeast requires as a nutrient?

They don't use much protein, but yeast do take in amino acids (the compounds which are attached together to make proteins) and pollen contains a fair amount of amino acids. The are a couple of threads about pollen as a nutrient if you search.

 

[maynard]

High pollen honey

Well, I'll be attempting to sell this as a High Pollen Honey for a little less than my last honey. Prices will be:

$6 - 1/2lb squeeze bottle
$10 - 1lb squeeze bottle
1 pint canning jar - $14
1 quart canning jar - $28

add $2 if you want it creamed, plus you'll have to wait a bit longer for the creaming process.

If there's takers, I'll sell it. If not, I'll make mead!

Not sure which I'd prefer at this point.

I still have 3 8-frame supers that I need to extract which should be around another 90lbs. I'm sure I'll get some mead sometime!

 

[WVMJack]

You should price it 2$ higher than your regular honey, its a value added product but you are acting like there is something wrong with it so people will think the same thing, This Stuff Has Healthy Pollen In It So Its Even More Better For You which is why we have to charge more. We have been playing with whole hive meads since we have both top bar hives and run some foundationless frames in the Langs, no excluders, pollen and even some drone brood get in there plus everything else coming or living in the hive and the wax. The ferments went very well, the light spring honey one we did has a nice light subtle taste of the flowery honey so no harm to flavor was done by having any of the other parts of the hive in there, the darker honey one we did was very good and it has not only dark honey but also some dark brood comb from trimmings. All that cloudy stuff will either precipitate and fall out or if it doesnt you can fine it easily with sparkaloid when its finished fermenting. WVMJ