Raw vs Processed

So lets here some opinions about raw vs pasteurized honey. Also all those that have done it fess up with some results. Thus far all the mead I have produced (well am producing) has been made with Sue Bee clover honey. Its pasteurized I'm sure, but its cheap if you buy it at the right place. I actually saw a small bottle of it at a local grocery store and it was or 6.99!!! This was probably somewhere around a pounds worth. I buy big jugs of this stuff at Costco for 7.99 for 5lbs. Talk about a price difference. I think the 8 gallons of mead that I'm in the process of making have almost paid for my membership already in savings. Granted I haven't looked as hard as I could, but I'm not finding many sources of local raw honey here in MI, anyone with some info on that would be a good soul in my book.

Another quickie note, I made a second batch of Joe's Grape Pyment from gotmead.com, but instead of the small buckwheat honey addition, used some Greek honey my aunt brought to the U.S. when she visited. If anyone has made some mead exclusively out of Greek honey, please tell me. The honey in Greece is absolutely spectacular and very unique. I wish I could find a local import source for some Greek honeys so I could make some traditional Ydromeli with out having to take out a loan!

I have made several good batches of mead from Sam's Club honey, which I'm sure is both pasteurized and blended from several sources.

Still, I've had great sweet/spiced meads, and if you're making a melomel, who cares how 'authentic' the honey is since the fruit is going to mask it anyways.

That said, I'd LOVE to score 15lbs of decently priced orange blossom honey and go to town on that.

I think with mead it really shouldn't matter whether you get raw or pasteurized honey because the first thing you do is boil, which is basically what they do to pasteurize honey if I'm not mistaken (which is possible). I'm still only on my first batch of mead so I cannot say from experience but I do prefer raw just because that's how it would have been made back in the day. I'll finish here with a quote from Brewing Mead by Gayre/Papazian (Which is a book I strongly recommend; It not only has lots of recipes, but the bulk of the book is the whole history of mead and speaks of how it was the first fermentable and all sorts of interesting things; it is out of print but you can still find it used on amazon.com for pretty cheap)

"Lighter honeys such as clover and alfalfa are often considered to be the best for mead making because of their minimal contribution of strong flavors. This view of 'best' may be debatable as traditional mead was most likely made with whatever honey was available, usually wild and mixed blossoms."

I've used both, and since I don't boil, I can taste the difference in a straight mead. The processed honey mead is a little flatter and a little less fragrant, though you can't tell the difference in a Mel or Metheglin.

Dionysus42 said:

I think with mead it really shouldn't matter whether you get raw or pasteurized honey because the first thing you do is boil,

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...if you boil. In my opinion you really shouldn't if you're going to use raw honey.

Both raw and pasteurized honey make good mead. With raw, there's a slightly increased risk of infection; with pasteurized, some of the delicate flavours are lost.

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Regarding acquiring raw honey in Michigan: the only commercial producer that I know of off the top of my head is Turtlebee and Honeytree Farms (http://www.turtlebeefarms.com/); you might also check with places like SEMBA (http://www.sembabees.org/)

Only raw, local honey for me. I found a local beekeeper on http://www.honeylocator.com/ who sells clover and wildflower honey for $1.25 a pound this year (prior to that it was $1 a pound). Five full one-gallon jugs for $75.

And, no, I do NOT boil my honey. I don't know when Papazian's book came out, but it sounds like some of his methods are outdated. Check out Ken Schramm's The Compleat Meadmaker, lots of great (and current) information there.

david_the_greek said:

So lets here some opinions about raw vs pasteurized honey. Also all those that have done it fess up with some results. Thus far all the mead I have produced (well am producing) has been made with Sue Bee clover honey. Its pasteurized I'm sure, but its cheap if you buy it at the right place. I actually saw a small bottle of it at a local grocery store and it was or 6.99!!! This was probably somewhere around a pounds worth. I buy big jugs of this stuff at Costco for 7.99 for 5lbs. Talk about a price difference. I think the 8 gallons of mead that I'm in the process of making have almost paid for my membership already in savings. Granted I haven't looked as hard as I could, but I'm not finding many sources of local raw honey here in MI, anyone with some info on that would be a good soul in my book.

Another quickie note, I made a second batch of Joe's Grape Pyment from gotmead.com, but instead of the small buckwheat honey addition, used some Greek honey my aunt brought to the U.S. when she visited. If anyone has made some mead exclusively out of Greek honey, please tell me. The honey in Greece is absolutely spectacular and very unique. I wish I could find a local import source for some Greek honeys so I could make some traditional Ydromeli with out having to take out a loan!

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I think you answered your and everyone elses question! First, I do not boil! I cannot find honey this year in Missouri or Kansas either. The cold snap back in April killed alot of the flowers and strained much of the fruit crop in the midwest. The bees did not like it either!!

All honey is not equal, neither are meads! I have no issues with those that boil, Go for it! My mead however will not be. I have been drinking mead since the late 70's. I have had some that were okay and some that just made me catch my breath. I still make stuff out of the cheaper honey cause it's all I can get without spending a fortune in shipping, but the backsweeten, when the true flavor will stay pronounced I use higher qualities, unprocessed. The same goes with traditional meads. I will not be making any traditionals this winter because of the shortage.

The melomels don't have the only flavor being honey but I do want it there. In the nose and hinting that it is honey, not just cane sugar. Pasturizing and boiling are a bit different. Anyway Do a little test. Make a gallon of boiled and a gallon not boiled. Keep them exact, including racking and additions except for the boil. Then truely blind test taste. I can tell and so can most people. Most of the time they don't know what the real difference is but most will say the boiled one had a flat or less intense flavor.

Now, what I'd like to know is, when you say raw, do you just unpasteurized, or do you mean RAW raw, like creamy and with bits of comb, pollen, bee butts, etc?

I've just made a 3-gallon batch with unfiltered raw honey, regular pasteurized honey, and flavored with Catnip. (It's a mint - I'm really into using it lately). I haven't tasted it yet, it's still fermenting along. I'll let you know.

Raw, as in unheated.

What you're calling RAW raw is unfiltered. There's not really a lot of chunks in the honey when I extract it, but passing it through a filter helps remove any wax cappings or chunks of pollen that made their way in. I don't extract from frames that have brood on them, so I don't have to worry about pieces of bee. Unfiltered honey tastes the same as filtered, but doesn't look as nice.

Thanks for those links flowery song! I'm definitely going to check those out. When I saw raw I assume usually unpasteurized and (but not necessarily) unfiltered. I would love to get my hands on saw unpasteurized and filtered honey. Since I'm making a pyment right now my mind is at ease with the honey issue. I'd like to get a traditional going though so I can age it nicely. Darn this brewing (beer/wine/mead in general) is way to fun for its own good.

Cap'n Jewbeard said:

Now, what I'd like to know is, when you say raw, do you just unpasteurized, or do you mean RAW raw, like creamy and with bits of comb, pollen, bee butts, etc?

I've just made a 3-gallon batch with unfiltered raw honey, regular pasteurized honey, and flavored with Catnip. (It's a mint - I'm really into using it lately). I haven't tasted it yet, it's still fermenting along. I'll let you know.

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Catnip? Hmmm, I have tons of that in my garden......

I've gotten good honey from http://www.glorybee.com

I still need to learn how to prevent my mead from getting too dry. Any suggestions? The two I've made have had like zero honey flavor, but the ones I buy are nice and lightly sweet.

The percentage of sugars that can be fermented determines the amount of sweetness. Kinda. haha good description I know. You can back sweeten if you would like a sweeter end product (racking onto a sugar solution of you choice) or perhaps end fermentation early via chemical additions.

Cheesefood,
You may want to concider a recipe we made as a group brew earlier in the year. It finished at 1.012 is a lightly sweet traditional mead. Brewing a medium sweet traditional was the goal of this mead for me, the yeast selection and honey were both aimed at hitting this target. There are some calculators out there that will help you design your recipe to get where you want to go. This is the recipe I used to get to my medium sweet mead.


20-LBS Raspberry Honey
4.5 G. DAP
4.5 G. Fermaid-K
4- Gallons Spring Water
10- G. 71 B Yeast
5-G. Potassium Carbonate (Ph buffer for high gravity meads)
12.5-G. Go-Ferm added to 166.25 G. water and mix. Then add the 10 G. of 71B yeast for your starter.
Warm 1-Gallon of water to 155F to disolve your honey in, add honey. Place your honey water mixture in fermentor.
Add 1-gallon room temp. water to fermentor and then add 2- gallons of refrigerated water . This should bring must temp. down to yeast tolerance temp. pitch yeast.
Follow SNA
OG-1.133
FG- 1.012

Almost forgot the total must volume was 5.75 gallons.

This recipe went off great and has been bulk aging in carboy since 6-9-07.
The taste is very nice even so young and we think it will only get better with time. We thought about Oaking this a bit but decided against it because we wanted to keep with the traditional theme, just plain ole Nectar of The Gods.........
This fermented out nicely in 18 days 4-21-07 to 5-9-07, it may of been a few days quicker but was checking gravity once every 4 days at this point. It finished at 1.012 and hasnt moved since.

Cheesefood said:

I've gotten good honey from http://www.glorybee.com

I still need to learn how to prevent my mead from getting too dry. Any suggestions? The two I've made have had like zero honey flavor, but the ones I buy are nice and lightly sweet.

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What kind of yeast are you using? Redhawke, sounds great! The 71B yeast is great for producing the fruity esters and allows a good young wine but also does age to great!

I would start with the D47 yeast and about 15lbs of honey. This will ferment to dry. Once you stabilize it then back sweeten with a quart of honey(the good stuff), this should take you to about a 1.00 to 1.01 Remember D47 takes it to 14% if you don't step honey additions. here is a chart that should help you figure your OG.
Formula to Compute Target Starting Gravity:

V x (DG - 1)
H = ----------------------
(SG - 1)

H = the total volume of honey required to achieve the desired starting
gravity,
V = the Batch Size
DG = desired starting gravity
SG = the specific gravity of your sweetener (honey's is 1.445)

For example:
If you wanted a 5 gallon batch with a starting gravity of 1.120, the
formula would look like:

h = 5 gallons x (1.120 - 1) / (1.445 - 1)
= (5 x 0.12) / (0.445) = 0.60 /.445 = 1.35 gallons