Honey Treatment

Hi guys, post number 1 of 2 today!

Does anyone here treat their honesy before they use it in fermentation? What I mean by treating the honey is anything from ageing it, to burning it for bochet, or to flavour it with herbs etc or any other method you use directly on the honey prior to fermentation.

I have done bochet in the past and found it really enjoyable so has anyone else had any luck with any other method of treatment?

I didn't when I did a melomel that ended up tasting great in a short time. Also did a basic mead without treating. But if you don't you probably wanna double the Camden cause honey does have a lot of bacteria in it.

!!!
Honey is normally pretty sterile, I thought, unless it is of watery consistancy???

Once honey is watered down it can be subject to infection, but the yeast and alcohol content should take care of that problem rather quickly. The issue with treating honey with spices and such prior to fermentation is that you have little control over the flavors in the finished project.

stella_tigre said:

!!!
Honey is normally pretty sterile, I thought, unless it is of watery consistancy???

Click to expand...

I think the sterility of honey is as you say , due to the tiny amount of water in the product (typically, I believe, it is 17% water). That is enough to actively kill organisms because honey is hydrophilic and so it removes any liquid that microbes and spores may have , sucking them dry. That is why and how honey was /is used as a bactericide on wounds.

When the amount of moisture in honey increases to 19% yeasts can survive in it and it is able to support fermentation.

Bottom line - there seems to be no need to use camden tabs (or K-meta ) to kill wild yeast or bacteria in the honey as the honey has already killed any microbes in it (there ARE exceptions but the exceptions , I think, won't be destroyed by K-meta). Any individual spores that may now be self inoculating will need to compete with the billions of yeast cells that you have just added... so there really will be no competition and so no real need for any additional help from the mead maker (IMO).

For me it depends on the honey. Raw unfiltered honey I pasturize on the cook top with some of the water added. I heat to 160F and hold in fo 20 minutes. I have done a grocery store filtered honey (Trader Joe's mostly mesquite) for a traditional style and just shook it straight into the water with no problem. Actually, the traditional is about ready for priming and bottling. Oh disclaimer -- I'm fairly new to this too, and have been learning a lot from the forum.

I never heat my honey, unless it's crystallized, and even then it's only enough to liquefy it. I also only add potassium metabisulfite (k-meta, Campden, etc) if I'm stabilizing or if I'm racking something a melomel.

I just mentioned that because people with weakened immune systems and really young children are soupused to stay away from it. But it makes since as well in the end when the mead is above 12% the alcohol itself should kill off most anything. I heat mine just to make it easier to stir in.

Just looked up some info on honey. Its not as bad as I thought it could be. Thanks for making me think about it!

edues said:

Just looked up some info on honey. Its not as bad as I thought it could be. Thanks for making me think about it!

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You were thinking of the honey-borne botulism, although I'm pretty sure that infants aren't going to be drinking my mead!

It's the same junk that worries us as canners, also, and it's inhibited by low pH - below about 4.6, I believe.

I heated the honey and water when making my first meads back in 2014 although I tried not to let the liquid mixture get above 60°C (I think) due to some advice from a YouTube video I saw on the Berserker Brewery channel. Heating above that destroys the subtle characteristics of the honey such as flavour and aroma.

Most of the meads I made this year involved no heating other than warming the water a little to help melt the honey and to try and get the residues out of the pot.