Honeysuckle Mead

I've got honey suckle everywhere around my house this year. The smell is awesome! I found this recipe for honeysuckle wine and would like to convert it to a honeysuckle mead recipe. I was thinking about just substituting 3lbs of clover honey for the sugar that it calls for? I'd like to do a 1 gal batch this year let it age for about 11 months and if its good do a 5 gal next year about this same time. Any suggestions?

* 4 cups honeysuckle blossoms
* 5 1/2 cups granulated sugar
* juice and rind of 2 oranges
* 1/2 pound raisins
* 2 teaspoons acid blend
* 1 teaspoon pectic enzyme
* 1 campden tablet
* 1 teaspoon nutrients
* 1 teaspoon tannin
* water to make 1 gallon
* 1 package wine yeast (I'm thinking Red Star Cote des Blancs)

I cant believe it only takes 4 cups of flowers to get a strong flavor. how do you prepare the flowers in the primary

There's actually 3 different recipes that I'm looking at. 2 from Jack Keller's site (winemaking: requested recipe (Honeysuckle Wines)) call for 6 cups of petals only and you simmer them and steep for 3 hours along with some citrus zest.

The one I posted above (Recipe -- Honeysuckle Wine) calls for 4 and all you do is throw them in the primary.

Of course these are only 1 gal recipes, but the more I look at them I think I like Jack Keller's recipes better. Mainly because I've made some of his recipes before and they were always good. His call for 2 1/2 lbs of granulated sugar. I think I might just replace that with 3 lbs of honey and see how it turns out.

personally I would skip the orange and maybe the raisins as well. Two Oranges in a one gal batch will probably give you a pretty strong orange taste. How long does the honey suckle survive in your area?

What I would do is make a batch with just the nutrients, honey and honeysuckle. Use this batch to determine what the honey suckle tastes like, and how much you need. After you taste the pure honeysuckle tester mead, you can come up with extra things to add flavor that will suite your taste.

I don't know what honeysuckle would taste like, so if it doesn't impart much flavor to the honey then the above is not really going to make much sense. The other issue is how the long honey suckle grows for, as making mead takes a long time, and you might not have fresh leaves after this first tester batch is made and tasted. You could probably harvest a ton of petals and dry them though.

I'm fairly new to mead making, so somebody else might chime in and give you a better idea of how the flavors would work.