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Royal Jelly

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Xixist

Xixist

NewBee
Registered Member
Jul 30, 2008
110
1
0
67
Near Palm Springs, Ca.
I was gonna post this in recipes but it's so far fetched I brought it to the hive. I have been thinking about the possibility of making a royal jelly mead. I understand the costs would be astronomical to obtain the needed quantities of the special queen bee-making nectar but if I we're King of the World...
Has anyone sampled or done analysis on royal jelly? Does it contain the same sugar concentration as the honey stored around it? Do those extra added hormones have a flavor?
It's human nature to fathom the absurd. -Xixist
 
Good to know that I'm not the only one that imagines completely absurd priced meads. Anyway, with a bit of research and a lot of reading, I've found that Royal Jelly is about 67% water, 12% protein, 11% sugar, and 5% fatty acid. This would mean you would need nearly 8 times the amount of Royal Jelly as you would honey. You'd probably also have to cook out a lot of the water to end up with a decent mead. The Protein and Acid would probably also cause some problems, but could perhaps give the Mead a very unique taste. The only thing I could recommend doing is making a traditional mead and throw some Royal Jelly in there and see how it does. You could end up with the smoothest, creamiest Mead in the world, or perhaps the most horrific Honey Protein Shake ever (a bit of a stretch, I know). Anyway man, good luck in your mental adventures.
I'm personally trying to figure out how to do a Rootbeer Mead or a Sweet and Sour Mead.
 
Generally I'm flatly unimpressed with Royal Jelly, Propolis, pollen and other hive by-product additives to mead. To me, they detract from the flavor, character and general profile that makes mead enjoyable to me. I've found them to bring a bitter, astringent and generally undesirable element to meads that I've made and tasted over the past several years.

Cheers, Oskaar
 
Ah well, royal jelly mead was a good fantasy while it lasted. It was based on the notion that if something requires more effort it will be better. I should have known that to be false after my last girlfriend.
Xixist
 
Dude, this is just my own opinion, not an absolute. Try it, you may find that you like it. That's the beauty of mead, you can make what you like and you don't have to take an opinion as an absolute!

Cheers, Oskaar
 
After using royal jelly in several meads I will have to defer to pete's comments.
The biggest problem is finding pure, fresh, royal jelly. Even then it is just a pain in the ... as it has a lot of water content and a lot of protein not to mention that the royal jelly that you want to use is going to be very expensive.
In my opinion you are better off using fresh pollen that is not bitter to the taste.
The best use of your time will be to find a local beekeeper that has the best honey that you have ever tasted.
ymmv

jim (the welder)
 
hmmm...bee pollen

since xixist brought this all up...
i've been thinking about a recipe i came across in 'sacred and herbal healing beers' that had royal jelly, propolis, bee pollen, etc. in it.
i'm just wondering since these items all have antibacterial qualities, does it make for a difficult fermentation?
anything weird about feeding?
just curious for the future, because this is still out of my brewing budgets' range (it's so hard to spend lots of money on ingredients when i have a freezer full of fruit).
 
I've tried that recipe. The fermentation works fine. I don't think it tastes differently from my other traditional meads. I suspect that most of the wonderful enzymes and proteins just get bound and deactivated as they precipitate out during mead clearing.

But please don't let me discourage you from pursuing it.

Medsen
 
Xixist said:
Ah well, royal jelly mead was a good fantasy while it lasted. It was based on the notion that if something requires more effort it will be better. I should have known that to be false after my last girlfriend.
Xixist
Click to expand...

Your LAST girfriend. Wow, that must've been a helluva long time ago. Haven't you been with the same woman for almost 30 years? :rolleyes:
 
Medsen Fey said:
I've tried that recipe. The fermentation works fine. I don't think it tastes differently from my other traditional meads. I suspect that most of the wonderful enzymes and proteins just get bound and deactivated as they precipitate out during mead clearing.

But please don't let me discourage you from pursuing it.

Medsen
Click to expand...

Medsen, could you post the recipe and extrapolate on the final product a bit. Thanks!
 
I think a tiny bit of royal jelly to spike the mead may give a psychological edge to it since placebos are so powerful. :)

Propolis, I have found, from an apiary I visited is simply tree sap, and usually from evergreens. Not a great taste in my opinion but your tastes may vary.
Until I found gotmead and heard about geraniol, I always described that off taste as pine needles. No propolis for me thanks.
 
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