bizarrojosh

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Hi All,

My friend got an old farm and discovered that in the 1950's it also had lots of bees and produced quite a bit of honey. They got out of the farming business but kept the honey in a dark cellar for all these years. My friend said that there's got to be about 1000 jars of honey or so.

However, the honey is nearly black and doest resemble the kind of honey that is fresh. They also have the honeycomb in all of the jars. Plus they are all about 60 years old.


Since they aren't fresh I was wondering if they could be used for mead.

What do you all think?

COLObrewer

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Personally, I wouldnt hesitate, just pull the wax out, melt it down, skim the top and you're good to go, honey doesn't go bad.

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Revvy

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I used 50+ year old honey in my 50th birthday barlewine. It's turning out awesone. Sadly the gallon of mead we made with the rest of the honey got infected because the BLANKETYBLANK neighbor behind where we were making those things fired up her lawnmower behind the garage just as we were about to pitch yeast.

It was jet black as well, but very unigue...

You might want to consider cutting it with fresh honey in some batches...blending it.

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Insomniac

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Sounds awesome, give it a taste, if it tastes good it will make good mead.

bizarrojosh

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Thanks for the positive responses guys! I'm going to give this a try!

Subsailor

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Post results please.

BigKahuna

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This is what you call a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The way I see it, You HAVE GOT TO MAKE THIS MEAD!

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MrSweet

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+1 .... interested as well - Subscribed

fatbloke

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If the OP has that much, then its begging for a proportional type experiment i.e. one from 100% "old" honey, another at 50% "old" honey, another at 25%, etc etc...... to get the "correct" flavour.......

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emjay

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It'd be easier to just make the 100% old honey, and mix the finished mead with other finished meads at varying ratios. It may not be the exact same, but it will be extremely close, and *more* than close enough to properly decide on how you want to use it.