Desert Mesquite Honey

Have a lovely jar of desert mesquite honey from trader joes that I'm itching to start something brewing. It's 3 pounds so I'll be doing a one gallon batch. Any suggestions on a great recipe for this kind of honey? Right now I have a spiced cycer, and an acerglyn going. I've never used mesquite honey before and want to make sure I get something great. Been toying with the idea of adding chili peppers to a mead, as I have some nice homegrown peppers and love the idea of a sweet & spicy mix.

Suggestions?

I just grabbed up 3 lbs myself at a local farm. Subbing to see what responses you get.

I entered in a contest the following recipe that was in a Mr. Beer for primary.

5# Mesquite honey from Trader Joes
1# Agave Nectar
2 roasted and peeled Ancho peppers
Vial of Sweet mead yeast
1.5 gallons of water

It scored ok, but did not win. Any ideas that I see from this thread, I'll use on my next attempt.

Mesquite honey is awesome; I'd just make a straight mead with it & showcase the varietal honey. But it's your honey, you do what YOU want to do with it.
Regards, GF.

gratus fermentatio said:

Mesquite honey is awesome; I'd just make a straight mead with it & showcase the varietal honey. But it's your honey, you do what YOU want to do with it.
Regards, GF.

Click to expand...

Thanks GF, was the kind of guidance I was looking for. Would you suggest going dry, semi-dry/sweet, or sweet?

nitack said:

Thanks GF, was the kind of guidance I was looking for. Would you suggest going dry, semi-dry/sweet, or sweet?

Click to expand...

I have heard good stuff about this honey.

I would make a straight traditional, but retain half a pound for back sweetening. You can always add a bit of wild flower to the primary ferment if its likely to give too low a gravity.

And use a yeast that will highlight as much of the flavour as possible. Something like K1V-1116

A finished gravity of 1.010 to 1.015 should do the trick.

I am NOT an expert, I've only made 6 batches of mead before. I used this TJs honey for all of them. I made:

• 2 batches of Malkore's (not so) Ancient Orange Mead. These were tasty!
• A Pyment. I mixed 64 oz of grape juice with water and 3 lbs of honey for a total of 1 gallon. This was really good, sort of like a sweet dessert wine.
• Grapefruit mead. This was pretty bad, IMHO.
• 2 batches of Ginger mead out of Papazian's book. A lot of people rag on the mead recipes in this book, but I thought this was my best mead.

Other than the grapefruit mead, I liked all of these better than any commercial mead I've had. My homebrew is Ok, but it's certainly not better than all (or even most of) the commercial microbrews out there.

nitack said:

Thanks GF, was the kind of guidance I was looking for. Would you suggest going dry, semi-dry/sweet, or sweet?

Click to expand...

I usually go for off-dry cuz that's what I like. Fat bloke's advice on FG is pretty much spot on, just depends on your taste. You could backsweten or try to balance the yeast's alcohol tolerance with your PA & OG. I just don't like sorbate in my mead, so I try to balance it.

I've only had 1 batch that was too sweet from my miscalculation, but it worked out as it was 18.7% ABV & needed that extra sweetness to counter the alcohol. I've had a couple that were a little dryer than I'd have liked, but it wasn't worth the trouble of backsweetening for me.
Regards, GF.