new to mead

ivegotabike said:

So I work in a 4 star pizza place and I'm addicted to age brewing beer and
I am very interested in making a nice mead. My restaurant is willing to let me buy a case of their pure clover honey for relatively cheap 30 pounds for 105 dollars. So 2 questions a) is this a good deal and is clover honey as good as the organic honey at the local whole foods store and b) what kind of recipe should I use with 30 pounds of honey obviously I would want to do a five gallon batch. I'm a mead virgin and I want to try it at least a few times. Please any input would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!!!!!

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fatbloke said:

Well I can't say about price, not being in the US, but looking at the Beefolks range of 5 gallon buckets, It looks like a reasonable price, but to quote the saying "your mead, is only as good as the honey". It's likely that they just use stuff that's blended with a view to eating/cooking. If you can get some, then raw honey will retain much more of the aromatics and more subtle flavour volatiles that tends to get processed out of the stuff that is sold for restaurant/commercial use.

Now if you're thinking of melomels/cyser/pyment etc i.e. brews with a fruit ingredient, the quality is a bit less important, because the fruit is usually the focus of the flavour.

I'd point you toward the Gotmead "NewBee" guide, as it's excellent for the new mead maker and answers most of the initial questions you might have.

If you can find a local liquor store that stocks meads, then that's one place to try the commercial offerings, or maybe if your state allows, mail order some in. There are a number of people over at Gotmead, that are professional producers that may be able to ship or have a supplier closer to you (shipping is, as I understand it, a bit of a pain in the US as there's the federal regs, as well as the differing state regs to contend with, and some of those regs are just plain stupid......)

Dunno if any of that is helpful or not.......

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