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Mead Lovers Digest #1530
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #1530, 6 July 2011
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #1530 6 July 2011
Mead Discussion Forum
Contents:
a plea (now that the digest is rolling again) (Mead Lovers Digest)
RE: Mead Lover's Digest #1529, 2 July 2011 ("keith and chris gill")
Re: Almost free honey (circle mouse)
Re: Crystalised Honey (Rebecca Sobol)
Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1529, 2 July 2011 (Timothy Smith)
Re: crystalized honey versus non (John McCue)
Re: Everyone should have their own bee hive(s) ("Joanna Bailey")
re: be careful where your honey comes from ("Ed Vendely")
Saving the MLD ()
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Digest Janitor: Dick Dunn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: a plea (now that the digest is rolling again)
From: mead-request@talisman.com (Mead Lovers Digest)
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 19:29:27 -0600 (MDT)
Folks -
Now that the MLD is getting articles at a reasonable rate again, would you
**PLEASE**
edit your replies to Digest articles so that you don't send an entire copy
of the previous digest along with your article. This is really pretty
basic email courtesy and common sense. I know people slip up and forget
now and then, but the current blowback rate is way beyond what would be
once-in-a-while mistakes.
If you want to quote text from a previous article to give context for
your reply, please do! That's as it should be. But returning an entire
copy of the digest along with your article is worse than providing no
context at all.
While I like to say (honestly) that maintaining the MLD is not much work,
these careless followups get annoying when traffic picks up. I have to
dig through them to be sure you haven't buried some new text in the
blowback, then clean out the unwanted old digest.
If I didn't remove all the "Original Message follows", and if everybody
who replied to an article included the entire original digest, the size
of the MLD would grow by roughly a factor of 6 every 4 days or so (at
current traffic rate). At the end of two months the size of a digest
would be about 5 petabytes (that's 5000 terabytes). Think about it.
But seriously...since I don't want an explosion of useless back material
in the digests, I've got various traps to catch submitted articles which
appear to be dragging whole digests along, and shunt them to one side.
The snag is that if I miss or forget to deal with the diverted article,
your pearls of wisdom may end up in the bit bucket for a while.
adthanksvance,
da Janitroid
------------------------------
Subject: RE: Mead Lover's Digest #1529, 2 July 2011
From: "keith and chris gill" <k.gill@comcast.net>
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 18:52:25 -0500
I have a 3 gallon batch that's been in Primary fermentation since Sept 2010.
It completed fermentation I just forgot all about it and now wonder if I can
bottle it and am ok or have I ruined the batch by being on the dead yeast
for so long? It's a still mead, slightly spiced. Thanks Keith
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Almost free honey
From: circle mouse <circlemouse@yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 17:50:25 -0700 (PDT)
Dick Dunn suggested that keeping bees is hard work. it certainly can be
hard work, but it doesn't have to be. I've been keeping bees for a little
while in Warré hives, and it's pretty darn easy. easy to build them,
easy to populate them, and easy to care for them. depending on individual
preference, Warré hives are generally visited only once or twice annually.
the boxes are smaller, so they're easier to handle.
the trade is somewhat lower yields than more conventional beekeepers achieve.
that's fine with me. a lot less work and material input for a little bit
less honey, and more consideration given to the long-term welfare of the
bees rather than maximum honey production. I guess this probably isn't the
place to discuss various schools of beekeeping thought, but the methods
that are most widespread are not the only option. and, in my opinion,
they're far from the best option.
tel
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Crystalised Honey
From: Rebecca Sobol <ris@g4coop.com>
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 19:46:02 -0600
On Sat, 2 Jul 2011 16:42:52 -0600 (MDT)
mead-request@talisman.com wrote:
> Subject: Crystalised Honey
> From: Patrick King <patkingfilms@optusnet.com.au>
> Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2011 09:49:05 +1000
>
> Hello, good to see newsletter has survived long enough for me to write
> in. My Mrs is a first season bee keeper here in Melbourne Australia
> and has had a bumper heist of honey. As she uses organic practice and
> raw extraction, a lot of it has crystalised. This makes it harder to
> sell but I believe if the crystals are small it is still good for
> mead?
Absolutely. We sometimes get 5 gallon buckets of honey, enough for a
few batches at around 10 lbs. per batch. It always crystallizes before
we finish the bucket.
Use a heavy icecream scoop to transfer honey from the bucket into a
kettle. Weigh the kettle first to get the tare. Add water and
heat gently while stirring until the honey dissolves.
Rebecca
- --
Rebecca Sobol Boulder, CO
http://UnicornUnchained.com/mead/
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Lover's Digest #1529, 2 July 2011
From: Timothy Smith <dreamgardens@att.net>
Date: Sat, 2 Jul 2011 19:54:09 -0700 (PDT)
I had a bunch of honey given me, and it was crystallized-I was able to
microwave it and use it quite easily. It liquefied pretty well (when heated)
it was Clover mainly I think altho' the lable mentioned 'wildflowers'
(Stroop's Label). Once I microwaved it-I poured it over into boiled water
(cooled but stil HOT) back and forth I went. I straight pitched yeast (Red
Star Bread Yeast!) added a quartered orange-some tea leaves-cinnamon sticks,
vanilla and some cherries with a very few pits left for tannins (just guessed
on that move!) made fingertip bottle closures out of latex gloves torn to
fit the 1 gallon jugs I used-rubber banded onto the jug lips-then I pierced
each tip. I pushed them over when I shook the bejasus out of each jug-then
I popped them atop the fridge and shook them gently many times over three
weeks-then racked-then let them sit and then racked once more then we drank
it all up. I really enjoyed the Cherries, altho repeat performance I blew
sparkling Chery Mead al OVER my white kitchen-when I tried to re-bottle one
bottle. Ooooops...I am very new at this-so if I left anything out-please
someone knowledgeable 'fix it' thanks. Good luck with your honey
Patrick and Mrs.
------------------------------
Subject: Re: crystalized honey versus non
From: John McCue <john_mccue@verizon.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Jul 2011 09:19:56 -0400
Lately I have a preference for my honey for mead to be in crystalized
form, I then only heat up my water and that breaks down the honey enough
to get out of the containers from my supplier Banner Bees. I think the
crystalized honey has a more complex flavor that is maintained into the Mead.
Someone in the list that is a scientist might dispute me, but I have
found it to be the case. When I buy honey that is "fresh" I will often
set it aside for a few months to crystalize and to develop it's flavor
more before making a mead with it.
If you have a tough time getting the fermentation started with the
crystalized honey try getting some distillers yeast and mixing a starter
with a small amount of the distillers yeast and honey or honey dust and
water and then add that to your regular yeast strain of choice and you
should get a very active fermentation.
Slainte,
Q
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Everyone should have their own bee hive(s)
From: "Joanna Bailey" <jbmail@isomedia.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 08:06:59 -0700
I can't really say we keep our own bees, since we ended up replacing our
lost hives this spring. Last summer our first hive (from whom we had
gathered some seriously amazing honey) swarmed. We were lucky enough to
catch & hive the swarm thanks to a neighbor who keeps bees and had spare
equipment. But later in the season we lost the first (and now weaker) hive
to robbing. The 2nd hive (formerly the swarm) did pretty well until we had a
terrible cold snap after a brief warm up. The warm weather woke them a
little and then the cold did them in. They hadn't built up enough population
mass to generate the kind of heat needed to survive that temperature.
So now that we have learned quite a lot more about bees, we're starting with
2 more hives that have a headstart using drawn out comb from the lost hives.
So far so good.
We are also working on our own small orchard, and some of our cider apples
are starting to bear fruit. We'll be adding to them this fall. There is also
the 35-hen laying flock, the 4500 sq ft 'garden', the farm horse, Katie,
being trained to ride, drive & work, and in summers we raise a couple pigs
for the freezer. I also can & dehydrate most of the food we grow.
Plus we both work full time off-farm and manage to enjoy recreational
activities here & there. It's hectic, wearing, and the most gratifying life
I could ever imagine. Learning how to bring some of these elements together
to make a tasty mead is a fun challenge!
- -Joanna
------------------------------
Subject: re: be careful where your honey comes from
From: "Ed Vendely" <Ed@sweetbettybees.com>
Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 18:58:33 -0400
Dick Adams wrote:
Subject: Re: Honey is cheap
From: MeadGuild@aol.com
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 01:27:40 -0400 (EDT)
> Be careful from where your honey comes ...
Unless something happened while I was sleeping, honey
imported from mainland China is an illegal import
because it is contaminated with God knows what!
Unless you are certain that the honey you are buying
has the blessing of the FDA, do not buy it!
Dick
- ---
Richard D. Adams
Ellicott City, MD 21042
FYI ; FDA does not regulate honey, USDA and your local health dept. does
that (thank goodness!). Just know where your honey comes from, as I
mentioned before, much processed honey in grocery stores comes from
large packagers, and unfortunately, those packagers sometimes mix honey
from multiple sources and China has a reputation for circumventing the
US ban on them by sending unlabeled bulk honey through other countries
(like India and Korea). Buy from local, known beekeepers and you
shouldn't have a problem.
- -Ed Vendely
www.sweetbettybees.com
------------------------------
Subject: Saving the MLD
From: <wout@nivo-media.nl>
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2011 18:47:18 +0200
So I thought I'd renew my subscription J
Let me introduce myself.
I am a long time mead lover and would be really sorry when this great list
would stop.
In my active meadmaking days we had fierce interesting discussions between
my meadmaking friends Dan MacFeeley (Dan, still there?), Chuck Wettergreen
and me. And a lot of others obviously.
Chuck stopped, I stopped and started again some few months ago (don't ask).
I came across a few interesting facts I like to share with you so in the
next few weeks I plan to have some contributions about things I never saw
appear in the digest, much to my surprise.
Nothing much to tell now, except I have some 100 liters going, half of which
is sweet and heavy in 2 batches. I made them first, because I planned to age
for 10 years or so.
Until I realized, that I will be almost 70 by then J So that will not
happen.
So let's start with a question: in the front of my garden there is a huge
pear tree. More than 100 years old. Variety: Noord-Hollandse Suikerpeer.
http://library.wur.nl/speccol/fruithof/fruit/Pee/Tekst/PeeT36.htm (use
Google Chrome and auto-translate).
I love the flavor of this pear though the texture is bad. It's best just
before yellow/ripe.
I am planning to try a 10 liter (2,5 gallon) batch of mel. I think I'll make
it dry at 12% because of poor acidity of this pear, but I'll titrate the
acid when I have the juice.
The problem with this variety is, that "just before ripe" never happens for
the necessary 20 kilos or so all on the same day. Also it ripens very
quickly.
Any ideas? Freeze? Pulp ferment and add fruit every day?
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #1530
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