Dry Meadowfoam/Carrotblossom Traditional

[seth8530]

And here on the scorecards for those whom might be curious. I myself was rather surprised I scored as high as I did. It goes to show that in competitions like this every single point counts.

 

[vernsgal]

And here on the scorecards for those whom might be curious. I myself was rather surprised I scored as high as I did. It goes to show that in competitions like this every single point counts.

Thats awesome Seth! Good on you!!!

 

[SouthernChemist]

Nicely done! I know I'd be pretty nervous to see such explicit reviews of something I made, but it definitely looks like they enjoyed the mead. Interesting that they differed on the aroma notes. What really makes it worth it though is the little checked box stating they would buy your mead. Reading the reviews makes me want to try it.

If you ever open a meadery, I think you know your first product!

 

[seth8530]

You know, I was actually looking forward to the explicit reviews since the last competition I entered (Wine Maker magazine) gave the most useless comments ever. Yeah, I thought it was rather interesting how the two judges differed so much on the notes. But I guess that is to be expected. When I get the chance I will taste it with the notes and see which set of notes I agree more with.

Yeah, I am kind of wanting to give this guy another try since he turned out so well... However, I am also mulling the idea of making a sack mead.... So many choices.

If I ever open a meadery.... Now that their is one of my favorite pipe dreams....

 

[SouthernChemist]

If I ever open a meadery.... Now that their is one of my favorite pipe dreams....

Dreams have been known to come true from time to time...

 

[seth8530]

Anyone ever tell you that you guys are a bad influence?

 

[SouthernChemist]

Anyone ever tell you that you guys are a bad influence?

There's a local meadery here that is about 3 years old now, I think. Their business is really taking off from the looks of things. Last time I was there, they had about 15 different meads you could pick 6-7 from to taste. Quite a variety. Helps that there is really nothing else around here like it.

 

[seth8530]

Good point, and one of the advantages of honey is that your supply is shelf stable year round.

 

[SouthernChemist]

Yep...good way to support local beekeepers, too!

 

[seth8530]

Indeed it is, shame the beekeepers around where I live only tend to do wildflower.... And want way more than their honey is worth /:

 

[vernsgal]

Indeed it is, shame the beekeepers around where I live only tend to do wildflower.... And want way more than their honey is worth /:

The same goes here!

 

[SouthernChemist]

It can be difficult, from what I understand, to ensure the bees produce single-source honey. Even if it's wildflower/whatever is flowering honey, though, it can be different. My dad had a couple of his hives located in an area about 20-30 miles from this other hives and in a swamp/coastal area at that. The honey he got from those hives was noticeably darker than the honey from the other hives.

But you're right about the price being high, too. I'm sure part of that has to do with some people being willing to pay whatever for a natural or 'organic' product. My dad doesn't sell his honey, but he has had people tell him to just name his price for a jar.

Course, the solution is to just have your own bees with your own meadery. The bees could be employees...just not for tax purposes!

 

[seth8530]

Yeah, I can see why it could be expensive..

However, you prompt another major advantage that a meadery has over a winery... The infrastructure needed to make your product is ready to produce much faster than vines are... And if you want another kind of honey, all you have to do is move the hives instead of growing new vines.

 

[Deezil]

It's a little more complex than that, Seth

It would actually, probably, take roughly the same time to build an apiary to the size of handling a meadery as it would take to grow enough vines for a winery.

Depends on how you do it though; there's as many ways to keep bees as there is to make wine; But it's something I'm learning about and interested in myself.. PM me if you really wanna get into it, I dont wanna completely derail this thread - or if a few of you PM me, I'll start a thread on it

But they probably call it 'wildflower' because there's over-lapping blooms nearby and they dont have access to large mono-crops or regions where there's only 1-2 things blooming at a time

 

[SouthernChemist]

Yeah, I can see why it could be expensive..

However, you prompt another major advantage that a meadery has over a winery... The infrastructure needed to make your product is ready to produce much faster than vines are... And if you want another kind of honey, all you have to do is move the hives instead of growing new vines.

You'd still be limited in when you could harvest honey...so it wouldn't be too different from waiting to harvest grapes. Depending on your area, you could maybe have more than one honey flow a year. I'm no expert on that, however.

Course, the only advantage of a meadery over a winery is the flexibility with what you make. Rather than planting different varietals of grapes, each with their own personalities, you can use the same honey to make different products.

 

[seth8530]

It's a little more complex than that, Seth

It would actually, probably, take roughly the same time to build an apiary to the size of handling a meadery as it would take to grow enough vines for a winery.

Depends on how you do it though; there's as many ways to keep bees as there is to make wine; But it's something I'm learning about and interested in myself.. PM me if you really wanna get into it, I dont wanna completely derail this thread - or if a few of you PM me, I'll start a thread on it

But they probably call it 'wildflower' because there's over-lapping blooms nearby and they dont have access to large mono-crops or regions where there's only 1-2 things blooming at a time

True true, I did not mean to dismiss the difficulty of owning enough hives as to supply a meadery. However, I meant the emphasize the flexibility of what you can make with a single investment. I would be interested in owning some hives. However, at the moment I am still attending university in a fairly large city, so I am not sure my apartment owner would appreciate it (; If you have some good materialI would still be interested in reading up on it though.

How long do you think it would take to get some bees producing say 300 gallons of honey a year?

You'd still be limited in when you could harvest honey...so it wouldn't be too different from waiting to harvest grapes. Depending on your area, you could maybe have more than one honey flow a year. I'm no expert on that, however.

Course, the only advantage of a meadery over a winery is the flexibility with what you make. Rather than planting different varietals of grapes, each with their own personalities, you can use the same honey to make different products.

Is honey production a year round deal? Or is it as limited as the American grape season?

The product flexibility is quite nice as you have mentioned.

 

[Deezil]

How long do you think it would take to get some bees producing say 300 gallons of honey a year?

300/gal per year @ 12lbs honey per gallon - you could probably pull that off in 4-5 years, realistically, with 45-50 hives - but this is all very location-dependent.

If you bought them as packages or nucs, all 45-50, the first year would be spent buying the package/nuc of bees, and building them up, letting them keep all their honey to winter on, and the second year they would be a full-size hive, and give you a honey crop. (but thats a lot of work, and if it's your first year at it, i'd bet you'll lose a few, having that many)

If you only started with, say 5-10 hives, you would spend the first year or two letting them grow, and maybe splitting off a nucleus colony or three, from each; the next year would be letting everything grow to full size and then you'd be able to pull the first honey crop - so it really depends on what you're starting with, where you're trying to go, and how you want to get there.. And thats not factoring in winter losses from starvation, fall losses from mites, and the occasional bear losses one might suffer lol..

Is honey production a year round deal? Or is it as limited as the American grape season?

I know it wasnt addressed to me, but...

From early spring to late fall, but theres 'blooms' and 'dearths' - times when theres an abundance of nectar and pollen, and times when theres none; the activity level involved with keeping up with the bees, increases and decreases alongside their activities. Then there's making splits, raising queens, honey harvesting, few other things lol..

 

[seth8530]

300/gal per year @ 12lbs honey per gallon - you could probably pull that off in 4-5 years, realistically, with 45-50 hives - but this is all very location-dependent.

If you bought them as packages or nucs, all 45-50, the first year would be spent buying the package/nuc of bees, and building them up, letting them keep all their honey to winter on, and the second year they would be a full-size hive, and give you a honey crop. (but thats a lot of work, and if it's your first year at it, i'd bet you'll lose a few, having that many)



If you only started with, say 5-10 hives, you would spend the first year or two letting them grow, and maybe splitting off a nucleus colony or three, from each; the next year would be letting everything grow to full size and then you'd be able to pull the first honey crop - so it really depends on what you're starting with, where you're trying to go, and how you want to get there.. And thats not factoring in winter losses from starvation, fall losses from mites, and the occasional bear losses one might suffer lol..






I know it wasnt addressed to me, but...

From early spring to late fall, but theres 'blooms' and 'dearths' - times when theres an abundance of nectar and pollen, and times when theres none; the activity level involved with keeping up with the bees, increases and decreases alongside their activities. Then there's making splits, raising queens, honey harvesting, few other things lol..

I see what you are saying, I guess just like wine making it is best to start off making 5 gallons instead of 50. Are these things you call bees work every day or are they kind of like mushrooms sit and forget except you got to change the sh!K out every now and then?


So, either way, it does sound like you have more honey gathering options than you have grape picking options...

Ha BTW, I just found out I will be spending the summer in Oregon 45 miles away from the place that supplies me honey all the way to TN. I think I am going to load up while I am there and save on some shipping.

 

[SouthernChemist]

As Deezil said, it would be a lot of work to get up to a 300 gallon production level. Not impossible, though. Bees are interesting in that they're not truly under your control...you can certainly influence them and motivate them to do things, but they have their own (collective) will.

My dad only got started in beekeeping because a swarm landed on a fence post at our farm. He's up to about 12 hives now, I think, after a couple years. A few weekends ago, when the weather finally turned warm and dry, he spent all weekend catching swarms and splitting hives. Apparently, his bees held up over the winter well despite the colder temps and ice storms they had down there this past winter.

 

[seth8530]

Wow sounds pretty awesume. Good to hear that the buzzing fellas are fairly robust. So I guess the qeustion is whether or not it is easier to herd bees or cats.


So since my brother was going to be bottling 11 gallons of beer I decided I might as well take this as my chance to go ahead and get the mead bottled. After around 5 hours going from prep work to cleanup we managed to setup the pump/filter setup, filter the mead bottle 11 gallons of beer, bottle around 24 bottles worth of my dry mead and rebottle some cloudy bottles of the cranberry mead into beer bottles so that they are now clear.

As you can see from the picture the mead quit at around 1.00 on the gravity scale So 131*(1.113-1.00)=14.8% So after various additions and dilutions from the filter setup and the such I am willing to say the wine is at the least a very solid 14%.

Over all the aroma is very floral, the flavour still needs a bit of work. Time will tell if the grape tannins were a good idea or not since the mead now has a slightly tart grape flavour to it now. It is still a little bit hot and needs some time to bottle age. I hope this will help it integrate a bit. The oak plays very well with the mead.

So overall the flavour goes floral to slight tart then pleasant oaky smoke and vanilla and finally dry grape tannin finish. I hope that with some more time it will all integrate a bit better. I plan on entering this guy into the mazers cup next year, by then it should be around 28 months old.