A Little More About Honey

A couple of posts ago, we talked about honey – mainly how it is made and flavor profiles, and today, we wanted to make a quick post about basic recipes!

Let’s talk quantities!

The generally agreed-upon formula is about three lbs of honey to about one gallon of liquid (usually water). This will produce a sweet/semi-sweet mead and about four (wine) bottles of mead plus a little extra to taste as you are going through the process. If you were to want a drier mead, you could reduce the quantity of honey to about 2.4 lbs per gallon of desired product.

So where do I get honey by the _____?

Farmers markets, apiaries. Farm stores will be able to order it for you, directly from the Keeper. And of course, online, but beware shipping charges – the five gallon bucket pictured above would have cost us around $100 to ship back home.

Also – beware promotional or specialty branding – Your average pound of bulk honey should cost between $5-$12 (with a few exceptions falling outside of this range – on either side)! Let me give you an example… In our travels, we came across a company that used honey in their products, and also sold the honey, with their logo on it. We bought some, turned out to make some really good mead, but it was expensive – upper end of that $5-$12 per pound… But it was some REALLY GOOD MEAD! So we acquiesced the next time we were near their shop, and upped the ante, going from three lbs for the first batch, to fifteen lbs, and nearly $200! Ok, but it’s some REALLY GOOD MEAD! But they don’t ship, so we were stuck only getting this honey on certain trips. But this time we kept a bottle and contacted the apiary where the honey was from, who told me what variety they sold to the company, and also they sell it in bulk themselves. For about a quarter of the price! As someone trying to start a business, that was a no brainer – even if we have to ship the honey in bulk, it is a third the price.

What honey do I buy?

The FDA (here in the United States) has regulations in place that any honey purchased here in the US and sold as honey must be pure honey with no additives. So, if it says honey, it should be safe – but we spoke about varietals a little while ago – how do you decide which honey to buy? It all comes down to taste – the flavor of the honey will show through in the final product – so try honey (not honey sticks – most of them have added flavors – but if you want to make a rootbeer mead, who are we to stop you) and let your taste buds tell you what to make, or research honey varietals. Just about every form of flowering plant has some kind of honey associated with it.

Back to bulk…

So a five gallon bucket of honey (pictured above) is about sixty pounds of honey. So twenty – single gallon batches, or four – five gallon batches. About eighty bottles of mead. Over six cases of wine!

And that’s where we will end this for today, well almost… Here’s a preview of some upcoming topics we plan on discussing, Do any of them pique your interest?

• Follow up to the Orange-Hibiscus-Cinnamon Mead
• Discussion of other ingredients in mead
• What you need to start making wine yourself
• Logo and label making – The design of our BeeDrop