Lemon blossom honey?

[FrodeM]

I read a lot of places that people recomend in particular Orange blossom honey for mead. As this type of honey is not sold in these parts of the world (Norway), I did some searching for places to buy it on the net.

Seems like the only place in Europe with high production of this honey is Sicily in Italy, but what's more: Beekeepers on Sicily also produce a signifficant amount of Lemon blossom honey.

I wonder how this Lemon blossom honey will compare to Orange blossom, and if it will make good mead. According to various descriptions, it is slightly more acidic and has a bit more pronounced citrus flavour than the Orange blossom honey.

Nevertheless, 2Kg of this stuff is on it's way in the mail right now.

 

[zippybasher]

Sounds great to me! I never pick up Citrus notes from orange blossom honey.

 

[Pekkales]

I've been struggling with the same thing (from Finland myself). They also produce significant amount of orange blossom and lemon honey in Spain. That's where I ordered my honey. Only got orange blossom but I'm also interested in trying the lemon honey, please share your experiences with it

 

[Daemon]

If it wouldn't cost an arm I would request a bottle of mead being shipped. I LOVE Lemon. I MAY have to find some lemon blossom honey to try this. I live in Florida so you can guess what honey is in my cyser.

Another option that I have heard is popular is clover. Acacia maybe interesting as well it is supposed to be one of the sweetest honeys. Also since Orange Blossom honey can be produced in Spain you may want to check there online.

 

[FrodeM]

I will keep you all updated when the time comes around!

A tip if you want to buy honey from aboard. Go to the country's local ebay page, and search for the name of the honey you want in the local language (google translate is of great help). Use Google translate yet again to translate descriptions, and when you find what you are looking for just copy over the item number to the english ebay page and buy it there. In particular in Europe, people seems quite willing to ship internationally.

 

[FrodeM]

Honey's here!

And now it's there...

The honey is more on the viscous side, a little like syrub, and very sweet. It has a very interesting taste; It's certainly floral, and in one way it has a hint of the smell you get when rubbing a lemon-tree leaf. On the other hand the sweetness is just owerpowering and affects all the other flavours a lot.

When I did the Heather almost two months ago, 2 Kg honey turned out at 1.100 with about 5.2 L of final liquid. With a similar amount in weight of the Lemon Blossom honey I had to be at 5.7 L volume to get the same gravity. I'm a bit afraid if I've dilluted it too much, but as I've mentioned before, I like my drinks more on the dry side. Only time will tell.

Also, I ran out of airlocks. Gonna fix that tomorrow.

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Day 4 or so update. A bit sluggish start; had to add about twice as much nutrients as with the other earlier batches, and some catbonate as well to get it really started. Seems to be bubbling along ok for now.

 

[FrodeM]

After a loooong time, here's an update!

I was a bit worried for the fermentation, in particular on the dosage of carbonate (I was using ammonium carbonate to double as a nitrogen source). The small 1L plastic bottle got infected, so I threw it away after primary (smelled like fart), but the carboy seemed to have turned out fine.

It cleared very fast and nicely, and I racked after the summer vacation. However, I let it stay on carboy untill bottling today.

As of the taste. It really tastes quite like lemonade with a shot vodka dropped into it. No bleach or fussel, but the pure ethanol taste is certainly present in the background. Still, the acidic, lemon and sweet tastes dominate (even it's landed at 1.000 FG!). Drinkable, but I'm surprised it tastes more like some sort of cocktail rather than some sort of wine.