Boiling honey

I have heard two opinions on this, should honey be heated to a boil or not.
Thx

Don't boil please... If you heat... Don't get over 160

The flavors and aroma are very easily cooked off. Boil the water first, then add the honey as its cooling off. The water should be plenty hot to sanitize the honey

Boiling was popular years ago. You usually see it in older recipes. Some people heat to 160ish. More and more people don't heat at all, myself included.

No hotter than 100 degrees for me. Room temp mostly now.

First timer chiming in here.... Ordered a sweet mead kit from northern brewer supplies online... Five gallon batch.... Boiled nothing , as. The recipie instructs... Been in primary for 9 days now, fermenting right along with schedule.... So far so good... My advice would be as a noob, get a quality kit and follow the instructions to a T, and you should be just fine... Also, as recomended by this site, pick up ken schrams book, the complete mead maker.... And read read read,,, have fun.....

Yup, at most I put a jar of honey in a sink of warm water ( like malt extract) to help the flow but that's it, no heat, no harm

liquiditynerd said:

Yup, at most I put a jar of honey in a sink of warm water ( like malt extract) to help the flow but that's it, no heat, no harm

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Yeah! I used to do that as well. Now I just use a sanitised food processor, pour or scoop out the honey, add water and blitz the hell out of it. Jars can just be rinsed/shaken with some of the brew water.....

You are boiling to sterilize the water not the honey. Bacterial cannot grow in honey that has not been reduced by water addition.

Honey is actually an antibacterial agent.

Several years ago I watched a report on the use of honey as an antibacterial agent for burn patients. They found that severe burns treated with honey healed just a little slower than the same type of burns treated with the most up to date antibiodics.

The warm water will make it easier to dissolve the honey in the water.

Thanks for you help all

Please read these links and make up your own mind, and perhaps even do an experiment of your own. There's a lot of posturing and rhetoric on this topic, and I agree with the general principles (boiling does decrease *some* of the aroma), but not the absolute rigidity with which some make their conclusions (boiling "ruins" honey, or some similar dogma).
Making Mead: The controversy over boiling
Making Mead: Testing the controversy...

Unless you're making a bochet, no boiling honey.

usfmikeb said:

Unless you're making a bochet, no boiling honey.

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All respect to usfmikeb (who makes a damn good Spiced Cherry Dubbel), but these are the types of rigid absolutes regarding this topic that I was referring to in my prior post...I generally agree that it's not *necessary* to boil honey, but to say it a 'no-no' is excessive...boiling makes a different mead, but not necessarily an inferior one.

That's a fair point, you can still make a mead if you've boiled the must. It will just have a different profile, having lost some of the aromatics of the variety of honey you've used. To be honest, I've never boiled my must, perhaps I should try that in order to see if the reduced aromatics leaves a more neutral flavor in the mead.

I would like to list some resources that supports my statements.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630111037.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1297205/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jul/25/honey-antibacterial-research-mrsa-c-difficile

Ahh, the mead section 'to secondary or not' argument.
There's a thread somewhere on here that two same recipe meads (one boiled, one not boiled) were judged by some novice and professional tasters.
The basic summary was that the boiled tended to have more body and the non boiled tended to have more more aroma. Tended being the key word here because neither the novice or pro tasters could even come close to unanimously decide which was which or even which characteristics were in either mead.

I think what is important here is that it is not necessary to heat the honey. You certainly do not have to. If you want to though, that is quite alright as well. I plan on doing an experiment once I have some free jugs, make identical recipes but one with heated honey and one unheated and see for myself what the differences are.

i brought my honey up to 160 for about 15 minutes when i made my mead, its no where nea done yet so i have not tasted it. its my first btch as well, but my thinking behind it is if im paying 10$ a pound (shipping included) for raw honey,i sure as hell want to know what type of yeast is in it down to the 1, seeing as many of these honeys only sell to health freaks and homebrewers theycan sit for periods long enough to get a yeast colony, and while i trut people to make my food sanitarily, i only trust me to take care of my booze ingredients

Yeast can't live or colonize in honey. If they are alive, very doubtful, they will be completely dormant and require several days if not weeks to wake up.

It takes incredible care and special yeast to start fermentation even at a 1:1 honey water ratio.

If it took special strains of yeast to makemead it wouldn't be the oldest alcohol, I'm not saying yeast will be partying in there but once you ad nutrients and water you never know, even a little competition is too much for my liking

honey is full of wild yeasts and once it sucks in moisture from the air they do start to ferment the honey. tho rather slowly.
sure heating honey will kill them, but commercial yeasts will dominate them rather quickly and wild yeasts will not do anything.

correct me if I'm wrong, tweake. But if someone does think wild yeasts are a concern; isn't a dose of campden for ~24-48 hours to knock out those wild yeasts still a better option than boiling honey?

that would work to. only think that worries me a bit is the over all amount of campden getting added. eg before ferment, after ferment, at racking, next racking, at stabilizing, at bottling etc. just watch the overall total amount used.

imho the boiling of must stems from years ago before they had clean filtered honey and water wasn't all that safe to drink to start with.

bodhi86 said:

If it took special strains of yeast to makemead it wouldn't be the oldest alcohol, I'm not saying yeast will be partying in there but once you ad nutrients and water you never know, even a little competition is too much for my liking

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Honey is fermentable by any yeast with enough water added, my point was how resistant honey is in its natural state.

My understanding is that honey has some wild yeast in it, but it is mostly dead or in completely dormancy because honey is so hygroscopic; honey will pull the water out of their cells killing them when they are active.

I mean mostly dead and what isn't dead is completely dormant.

I don't use any Camden, and the only chemical I use is the sterilizer ( potassium metebiblahblahblah) on the carboy because it's to big to try to boil sterilize. When I get a big enough pot I'll be100% chem free additive free ( cept for yeast nutrient, which one day I'll find the yeast superfood fruit that taste good with different meads)

bodhi86 said:

I don't use any Camden, and the only chemical I use is the sterilizer ( potassium metebiblahblahblah) on the carboy because it's to big to try to boil sterilize. When I get a big enough pot I'll be100% chem free additive free ( cept for yeast nutrient, which one day I'll find the yeast superfood fruit that taste good with different meads)

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You do know what campden is?

lawpaw said:

My understanding is that honey has some wild yeast in it, but it is mostly dead or in completely dormancy ..........

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its just dormant. we get fermentation in fully sealed containers now and then. ie no external yeast has come in with contact to air. if theres enough moisture wild yeasts will get going.

AZ_IPA said:

You do know what campden is?

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i usually use Sodium Metabisulphite for sterilizing as its cheaper and lessens the build up of the potassium from the campden.

AZ_IPA said:

You do know what campden is?

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you caught me there, apperently i do use the same stuff, justy not tablets, live and learn thanks for the info
but i dont it do my mead, just another thing id have to age out