60 year old honey; good for mead?

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bizarrojosh

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Hi All,

My friend got an old farm and discovered that in the 1950's it also had lots of bees and produced quite a bit of honey. They got out of the farming business but kept the honey in a dark cellar for all these years. My friend said that there's got to be about 1000 jars of honey or so.

However, the honey is nearly black and doest resemble the kind of honey that is fresh. They also have the honeycomb in all of the jars. Plus they are all about 60 years old.


Since they aren't fresh I was wondering if they could be used for mead.

What do you all think?
 
Personally, I wouldnt hesitate, just pull the wax out, melt it down, skim the top and you're good to go, honey doesn't go bad.
 
I used 50+ year old honey in my 50th birthday barlewine. It's turning out awesone. Sadly the gallon of mead we made with the rest of the honey got infected because the BLANKETYBLANK neighbor behind where we were making those things fired up her lawnmower behind the garage just as we were about to pitch yeast. :(

It was jet black as well, but very unigue...

You might want to consider cutting it with fresh honey in some batches...blending it.
 
If the OP has that much, then its begging for a proportional type experiment i.e. one from 100% "old" honey, another at 50% "old" honey, another at 25%, etc etc...... to get the "correct" flavour.......
 
fatbloke said:
If the OP has that much, then its begging for a proportional type experiment i.e. one from 100% "old" honey, another at 50% "old" honey, another at 25%, etc etc...... to get the "correct" flavour.......

It'd be easier to just make the 100% old honey, and mix the finished mead with other finished meads at varying ratios. It may not be the exact same, but it will be extremely close, and *more* than close enough to properly decide on how you want to use it.
 
It'd be easier to just make the 100% old honey, and mix the finished mead with other finished meads at varying ratios. It may not be the exact same, but it will be extremely close, and *more* than close enough to properly decide on how you want to use it.
I was just thinking that if it did turn out to have an "old" taste to it in some way, it would be easiest to work out a ratio of X% old honey, to Y% of a new variety, like clover or maybe orange blossom or something. Then what ever the successful ratio turns out to be, the rest can be made into larger batches one at a time, to use it up.

But either way will probably work out fine, I'd have thought........
 
My only question is 'did the 50 year old honey taste ok'... I mean 90% of the time if what I start with tastes bad, that bad ends up in the finished product... oddly enough, the reverse doesn't hold for me. Plus, I want to know how this turns out.
 
the BLANKETYBLANK neighbor behind where we were making those things fired up her lawnmower behind the garage just as we were about to pitch yeast. :(

It's probably not the first time she's seen you brewing. That sounds like grounds for a drop kick to me...

OP: go for it! This is a once in a lifetime chance here!

Just don't forget to post pics along the way ;)
 
Whoa, I go away for 3 or so weeks and everyone wants to know what's going on haha.

I still haven't made any mead yet. My friend lives in another state so it may be a while before I can get access to the honey. But I promise, once I get the honey I will take lots of pictures and post them here. Actually we were just chatting about meeting up in about 2 weeks so maybe that will be the time? Stay tuned.
 
Whoa, I go away for 3 or so weeks and everyone wants to know what's going on haha.

I still haven't made any mead yet. My friend lives in another state so it may be a while before I can get access to the honey. But I promise, once I get the honey I will take lots of pictures and post them here. Actually we were just chatting about meeting up in about 2 weeks so maybe that will be the time? Stay tuned.
TVM for the update.


Haha! You've no idea of the curiosity this has caused me.

Insomniac got a **** load of "older" honey some months ago, off eBay. He kindly sold me about 100lb or so. Some of it would be as old as 20 years, but 50? damn! that's piqued the curiosity/nosey grey matter........:D
 
I would really love to see how this goes as well. Last year I got about 20 lbs of an old honey that had been sitting in buckets in an old mormons basement for an undetermined number of years. The number i was told was 15 years but judging by the looks of the honey it had to have been alot longer, as it was almost like a molassas, but was definitely honey. It was also assumed to be a local low desert/mesquite.
mesquitehoney.jpg

I put half of it in a 3 gallon carboy with water and yeast and nothing else just to see what would happen and it turned out great! Very dark, like the prune melomel I had made, with a beautifully balanced aftertaste.
mesquite021612_2.jpg

I think I'm gonna try a bottle every 6 months just to see how it ages.

It looks cloudy but it's not! I put a flashlight up to it and it's clear as can be, just extremely dark.
 
OK, so here's an update. My friend and I are going to go to his family's house in December (once the school semester is completed and we actually have time to do stuff) to load up my van with as many of the thousands of jars of honey that we can. Then we are going to make some mead.

The question now is which recipes should we use?

I want to use a standard mead recipe to just get the essence of the honey, but we would also like to try some with other flavors.

Any suggestions? We've got some time to think it over. Also, I've never made mead, but I've done lots and lots of beer and a few wines. I'm open to anything. Thoughts?
 
Make a "show mead" 3# of honey per final gallon (15# in a 5gallon batch) and split it up using fruits and spices... Keeping 3 gal MINIMUM pure!
Nah, bollocks to that, we'd be waiting forever for updates.

The OP should get enough of a steer with a traditional. Maybe a sack as well at the same time:D
 
They have found honey that were in the pyramids and are thousands of years old that is still 100% fine . Go for it honey has a indefinite shelf life. Cockroaches and honey those are earths true survivors.
 
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