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Mead Lovers Digest #1226
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #1226, 2 November 2005
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #1226 2 November 2005
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
digest delay (Mead Lovers Digest Admin)
Zymurgy: article "Mastering Mead" ("Dan McFeeley")
Re: Paterson's Curse ("Dan McFeeley")
NOTE: Digest appears when there is enough material to send one.
Send ONLY articles for the digest to mead@talisman.com.
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A searchable archive is available at www.gotmead.com/mead-research/mld
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: digest delay
From: mead-request@talisman.com (Mead Lovers Digest Admin)
Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 16:18:35 -0700 (MST)
There will be a longer-than-usual delay between this digest and the next
one. Please do not adjust your sets.
- the janitrosity
------------------------------
Subject: Zymurgy: article "Mastering Mead"
From: "Dan McFeeley" <mcfeeley@keynet.net>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 12:08:46 -0600
I wanted to give MLD readers a pointer to the latest
installment of Zymurgy's "Mastering Mead" series,
"Optimizing Honey Fermentation" by Ken Schramm.
It just came out in the November/December 2005
issue of Zymurgy.
This is a good article and a nice update for readers
of Ken's book "The Compleat Meadmaker." Ken
also includes data on some experimental analyses
he had done through the University of Cornell,
previously posted here on the Mead Lovers Digest.
Research is always a work in progress (it's actually
written into the very logic of the scientific method)
and that is certainly the case with honey fermentation
and meadmaking. Not long after Compleat Meadmaker
came out, Ken was already presenting new information
in seminars on the science of meadmaking that had
gone beyond his book.
I hope his publishers are keeping an eye on Ken's
activities and thinking an update to Complete Meadmaker
will soon be needed.
<><><><><><><><><><>
<><><><><><><><>
Dan McFeeley
"Meon an phobail a thogail trid an chultur"
(The people's spirit is raised through culture)
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Paterson's Curse
From: "Dan McFeeley" <mcfeeley@keynet.net>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 13:05:47 -0600
On Thu, 27 Oct 2005, in MLD 1225, Dick Adams asked:
>Does pasteurizing kill off these toxins known as
>pyrrolizidine alkaloids?
I don't think so. Honey is often heated in order to better
facilitate processing and packaging, and this doesn't
seem to have affected the warnings given by the Food
Standards of Australia & New Zealand (FSANZ).
I would still caution against reacting too strongly about
this honey. We already have similar warnings about honey
produced by nectar from rhododendron species. Emergency
rooms in Northern California are familiar with this -- toxic
honey ingestion is looked at as a possible differential diagnosis
for myocardial infarction (heart attack). In other words, it's
not a new situation. So long as meadmakers continue to
take the same measures they've always taken, it's not too
much to worry about.
Here's a repost of material I'd cross posted to the Mead
Lovers Digest some time ago:
- --------------------------[snip]-------------------------------------
From: Dan McFeeley
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 1999 9:12 AM
To: ane@oi.uchicago.edu
Subject: Re: ane Mad Honey (long!)
At 12:41 AM 4/2/99 -0500, Judith Weingarten wrote:
>Message text written by Dan McFeeley
>>Leach, David. "That's Why the Lady is a Tramp," Journal of the American
> Rhododendron Society, October 1982, pp. 151-152.
>
>Mayor, Adrienne. "Mad Honey!" Archaeology, vol 48, #6, November/December
> 1995, pp. 32-40.<
>
>For those of us without easy access to the Jr of Am Rhododendron Soc, or
>even Arch., could you tell us what are the (claimed) effects of eating raw
>honey?
>
>It sounds fascinating.
>
>Judith
Sure!
The problem is not so much eating raw, or organic honey, but the nectar
source of the honey. Certain plants are toxic and if the toxin is also in
the nectar of the flower, honey produced by it is also toxic. Kenneth
Lampe, writing in the Journal of the American Medical Association,
warns that the most likely sources for honey poisonings are small
operation apiaries or farms. Experienced beekeepers are generally
aware of any toxic floral sources in their area and take the necessary
steps to prevent their honey from becoming a source for toxic poisoning,
such as monitoring the produce and blending the honey from varying
nectar sources in sufficient quantities to eliminate any danger from
toxicity from the local flora.
Raw, or unprocessed honey can present other dangers to consumers. Honey
has a water content of about 17 or 18%, which is too high an osmotic
pressure for micro organisms to grow and reproduce. It does contain
the spores of wild yeasts and bacteria, including botulism spores, as well
as various pollen grains from the nectar source. People with allergies can
have a reaction to certain types of honey, and honey can be dangerous to
children under one year of age due to the immaturity of the immune system
and G.I. tract. Commercial processing can reduce these risks, but honey
of any kind should never be given to children under one year of age.
The recorded history of the flowering rhododendron as a source of honey
poisonings goes back several millennia. The ill fortunes of Xenophon,
author of the _Anabasis_, brilliant military leader and a former member
of the circle of students who followed Socrates, may be one of the more
well known instances of honey poisonings. In 401 B.C., after a disastrous
campaign in Persia, Xenophon was elected to take command of 10,000
Greek soldiers. He lead them through mountains of Kurdistan, through
Georgia and then Armenia. They made camp in the territory of Colchis,
two days march from Trebizond, where they noticed a large number of
beehives. After feasting on the honey they raided from the hives, the
soldiers became "like intoxicated madmen," were seized with fits of
vomiting, became weak, disoriented, and collapsed by the thousands.
"A great despondency prevailed," he wrote, until they recovered a few
days later and moved westward to friendlier territory.
Pompey's armies, in 67 B.C., did not fare as well. While campaigning
against Mithridates, the king of Pontus, he camped near Trebizond,
close to where Xenophon's soldiers had camped three hundred years ago.
Allies of Mithridates, the Heptakometes, placed toxic honeycombs along
Pompey's route.
The same scenario was repeated, and Pompey's soldiers were massacred.
The incident is recorded in Strabo's _Geography_. A similar ruse was used
against Russian foes of Olga of Kieve in 946 A.D. Five thousand were
massacred after accepting several tons of fermented honey from her
followers. Tartar soldiers were cut down by Russians in 1489 after
stopping at an abandoned camp and drinking from the casks of mead
they found there.
The nectar source for what came to be known as "mad honey" was a species
of rhododendron well known in the Black Sea region. The Roman naturalist,
Pliny wrote of the toxic honey of the region, calling it 'meli maenomenon,'
or "mad honey" and noting that, although the people of the area were able
to pay a large tribute of beeswax to the Romans every year, they were
unable to sell their honey due to its poisonous quality. Pliny was also
one of the first writers to attribute the toxic source of the honey to the
native rhododendron, azalea and oleander plants. Dioscorides, a Greek
physician whose _De Materia Medica_ became a major herbal reference for
physicians over the next 1,500 years, also noted the toxic nature of honey
produced in the Black Sea region and the flowers which produced the toxin.
Many modern writers considered themselves more enlightened and lightly
discounted the idea of mad honey. According to the _Encyclopedia
Britannica_ of 1929: "In all likelihood the symptoms described by these
old writers were due to overeating," or to eating honey "on an empty
stomach."
On the other hand, in the _Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society_
(vol. 5 1802), Benjamin Barton gave a detailed report of known cases of
toxic honey poisoning in the U.S. The symptoms he described, dizziness,
disorientation, pain in the GI tract, convulsions, profuse perspiration,
vomiting, closely matched the descriptions of the Classical writers.
Former confederate surgeon J. Grammer wrote in _Gleanings in Bee Culture_
(1875) of cases of southern soldiers poisoned by honey. Again, he
described symptoms of tingling, blurred vision, nausea, and loss of muscle
control which subsided in a few days, just as had been recorded in ancient
times.
P.C. Plugge, in 1891, was able to isolate the toxic compound in the honey
from Trebizond and identified it as andromedetoxin, now known as
acetylandromedol, a type of grayanotoxin. Pliny was verified; these toxins
are known to occur in Mediterranean oleander, members of the heath family
(Ericaceae) which includes the rhododendron, azaleas of the Black Sea
and Caucasus area, and the mountain laurel of the Eastern United States
and Pacific Northwest.
Grayanotoxins act as breathing inhibitors and hypnotics that act upon the
central nervous system. Their effect is to bind to sodium channels in
cell membranes, an important mechanism governing muscle and nerve cell
activation and deactivation. As a result, heart action, muscular control,
and the nervous system are greatly affected, according to the amount of
toxin taken into the body. Death is rare, but has occurred. Symptoms
begin with tingling, numbness, dizziness, impaired speech, and even
hallucinations such as whirling lights. With greater amounts of ingested
toxin, victims experience vertigo, delirium, nausea and vomiting, impaired
breathing, bradycardia (dangerously low heartbeat), hypotension (a drop
in blood pressure), cyanosis (blue color to the skin due to impairment
of the respiratory and circulatory systems), muscle paralysis and
unconscious. In severe cases, ventricular tachycardia (abnormally high
contraction of the lower ventricular chambers of the heart) compounded
by contractions of the heart out of sync with the sinus node, the primary
pace maker of the heart, can occur.
Toxicity levels vary according to the species of rhododendron. Some are
highly toxic, such as the species that blooms so profusely in the Black
Sea region, and some are mildly toxic or even inactive. Poisonings from
ingestion of the plant or its nectar are extremely rare, and are more
commonly encountered in instances of toxic honey ingestion. Given the
care of beekeepers to prevent their honey from being contaminated by
toxic local flora, these cases are generally accidental. They are
common enough, however, on the northern Pacific coast for emergency
room departments to consider honey poisoning as a differential diagnosis
to be ruled out in cases presenting as acute myocardial infarction.
Treatment in these cases generally focuses on the cardiac symptoms of
altered heart rate and hypotension, with careful monitoring in the event
that the cardiac symptoms are severe enough to require a temporary
pacemaker. Poison control data bases used by hospital emergency rooms
in all parts of the country will have some mention of toxic honey. Victims
generally recover within a few hours, with the symptoms subsiding at most
in a few days. Again, death from honey poisoning occurs very rarely in the
total number of recorded cases, and is dependent on the amount of honey
ingested.
Honey poisonings in the writings of Greek and Roman authors are usually
associated in the springtime. Longus, a romantic poet of the 2nd century
A.D., for example, sung of the kiss of his lover, comparing it with "the
madness of new honey." Descriptions of mad honey, however, varied.
Benjamin Barton thought it was usually reddish in color, some ancient
descriptions pointed to an acid or bitter taste. Others said it was
indistinguishable from good honey, or worse, that a single honey comb
might contain both toxic honey and good honey. John Ambrose, state
apiculturist in North Carolina, has pointed out that bees will usually
bypass Ericacae plants when there are flowers with higher sugar and nectar
content available. Rhododendrons bloom early in the spring, and sometimes
are a dominating area flora. When these are the only flowers available
to ranging bees, the honey will be toxic, particularly in the springtime.
"Green," or unripened honey, i.e., uncapped honey whose water content has
not yet been reduced by the bees, seems to be the most suspect honey
for toxicity.
Although the dangers of mad honey were familiar to natives of the areas
where it was well known, it was not shunned altogether. Pliny wrote that
well aged 'meli maenomenon' made a good mead. The people of the
Caucasus area have used toxic honey for centuries to add to alcoholic
drinks. The purpose was to intensify the alcoholic effect. Toxic honey
was known as 'deli bal' in Turkey and was a major Black Sea export in the
eighteenth century. Toxic honey, known as 'miel fou' to consumers in
Europe, was shipped in amounts of 25 tons yearly, to be used in European
taverns. The size of the dose determined the effect, recreational drug or
strong poison.
Adrienne Mayor, in his article titled "Mad Honey," published in the Nov/Dec
1995 issue of _Archaeology_, offers some fascinating speculations about
the use of mad honey among the Greeks. Roman writers, he states, noted
that the Pythia at Delphia used laurel leaves, either burned or chewed,
to induce the ecstatic state in which the future was prophesied.
Suggesting instances where the use of grayanotoxins may have gone poorly,
he cites Plutarch's observation that Pythias often died young, or a trance
that
went terribly out of control. In the 2nd century A.D., according to
Plutarch, the Pythia had become terribly disoriented, rushed about
shrieking, and then collapsed and died. The meaning of the word laurel
is unclear. The Greek word is 'Daphne,' which can include plants native
to Greece that are poisonous, causing stupor, convulsions, and even death.
Laurel and bay are terms for species with similar characteristics such as
dark,
glossy, and evergreen type leaves, but include diverse species, such as
rhododendrons, according to Mayor. He states that if the Pythia were
using a plant to assist their ecstatic states, it was likely one of the
flowering
plants of the Ericacae family.
Mayor also advances the proposition that women who took part in religious
rites made use of mad honey, or mead with added mad honey. The _Homeric
Hymn to Hermes_, composed between the 8th and 6th centuries B.C., describes
bee-priestesses, or 'melissai,' who revealed the future under the influence
of "maddening" honey. These melissai lived by the cliffs of Mount
Parnassos and fed on
'meli chloron,' food of the gods
Divinely maddened, they are inspired to speak the truth
But if they are deprived of the divine honeycomb
they cannot prophesy.
'Chloron' is usually translated as "golden" or "liquid," suggesting a mead,
but Mayor points out that 'chloron' can also indicate "green," as in fresh
or uncured. The 'meli' here can also mean the green unripened honey of
the spring, or mad honey. The hymn also compares the religious frenzy of
the melissai to that of the Maenads, female followers of Dionysos.
In the 5th century, playwright Euripedes wrote of the Maenads as waving
wands flowing with honey and who drank an intoxicating mixture of honey
and alcohol to achieve a prophetic state of mind. Mayor further speculates
that, because the Pythia at Delphi were also known as 'melessai,' or
bee-prophetesses, it is possible that mad honey, or mead spiked with
mad honey, was used to inspire the prophecies of the Delphic oracle.
<><><><><><><><><><>
<><><><><><><><>
Dan McFeeley
"Meon an phobail a thogail trid an chultur"
(The people's spirit is raised through culture)
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #1226
*******************************
