Meadmaker here!

Hey, just joined and am thrilled to share and receive some great advice. I've been making wine now for about 10 years after converting my homes old "coal room" into what my wife reffered to as my lab/man cave. My beautiful bride is by far my biggest critic. Luckily she doesnt hold back and lets me know if it's friend worthy or not.
I'm going to be starting on between 10 and 15 gallons of mead shortly. The only thing is, it is being made with uncapped honey. It was the only stuff I could get a hold of on short notice this time around. Uncapped honey is the stuff that was never capped over by the bees so it has its own source of yeasts already present.
If anyone has ever used this in the past, it would be great to hear from you.
Thank's and brew on!!!

Hi Meadmaker,

Welcome to winemakingtalk. We have a couple people here who make mead, I'm sure they are going to be excited to another one.

I am no mead maker, in fact I just tried for the first time this year as an experiment. However what I do know is bees. The uncapped honey that you are talking about is not going to be as sweet as capped honey. The reason (if you didn't know) is because before it is capped it still has a certain amount of moisture still in it. Once the bees have dehydrated it to the right amount of moisture then they will cap it.
As far as having natural yeast in it I am not so sure about that part, it is possible I suppose, but once the bees put the honey in the cell it is pretty much pure. That is outside of the excess moisture that is present. If that is what is carring the yeast then where does the yeast go once the moisture is gone and before they cap it?
We call uncapped honey "green honey", because it isnt ready to be harvested yet.

BTW welcome to the forum, and with any luck fatbloke will be along to help you out, he seems to be a pretty knowledgable mead maker.

Hello. Glad to have you. Try to avoid fatbloke. I heard he punches kittens.

LOL, your mean. This person don't know any better, they might believe you. Good thing ol Troy isn't around he really could scare some new people, although he has been missing for a while, has anyone heard from him latley.

Hello Meadmaker,
Glad to have you aboard. You will get some good info here. Arne

Welcome aboard Meadmaker.

Great info you guys on the honey as Ive never heard or read about it. I would imagine any honey unless pasteurized would have wild yeast in it but who knows what them bees are capable of. Welcome Meadmaker, I too make plenty of mead and in fact have a Blueberry Melomel bulk aging as we speak and took 1st place in my state with my Raspberry Mead.

Thank you all for the greetings and advice. I too have been an aparist (beekeeper) so I know alittle about beekeping and honey. I am just excited about getting with those that love the hobby (infatuation) as I do.
The uncapped honey that I will be working with is alittle lighter than what I am used to working with but I have adjustments for that. I will post pics of our brew next weekend...mead and braggot!!!

hello and welcome to the forum,

looking forward to hearing about the braggot too..

if you are inclined, you could add a pic of yourself.. always nice to put faces to names.

Allie