Anyone make a Mead with Honeysuckle?

[Dr_Floyd]

I've been curious about it and wanted to know what opinions anyone experienced with using the flower from a Honeysuckle plant. I realize it'd have a similar smell to honey by itself but how does it taste? I'm thinking it might be fun, almost like a dry hopping effect in beer.

 

[JJack887]

I'm doing a flower blueberry mead for my next batch, so I'm subbing to see if I can add this to the list of flowers I want to use. If it's safe to eat, make a small tea and see how it is.

 

[Dr_Floyd]

I'm assuming it is safe to consume in at least tea form as you can buy some for such purposes on Amazon. I'm also assuming they must be dried out first though. In addition I've found beer recipes that use Honeysuckle but at most they just say it has a weird taste, I'm looking for specifics though.

 

[Dr_Floyd]

The best I could find is that making a tea from Honeysuckle is very sweet and has an herbal taste to it. I'd imagine that since I plan on NOT making a tea from it and I'm just throwing it in the fermenter that the herbal taste will be less present. I plan to use this and cinnamon in a Lactomel (Milk Mead), so I guess we'll see in a few months how it turns out!

 

[Lefou]

No experience using honeysuckle blooms in mead, but plenty experience drinking it. More than 10 years ago when I was living in Northern VA, there existed a place way out in Sperryville called "The Smokehouse Winery". It was run by a guy named John Hallberg who made an excellent honeysuckle metheglin. I'd drive all the way from Fairfax and back with several bottles of his perfectly aged mead, happy as a little kid with a new toy. Drinking one whole bottle by myself was very easy and his semi-sweet mead never left me with a hangover. Unfortunately, his meadery is no longer in business but I have some very good memories of John's wine.
I'm assuming John used the flowers for aroma, added to the secondary much as a beer would be dry-hopped. Honeysuckle flowers have a very sweet nectar inside, but with a honey overtone, you may never realize that specific taste because of the ratio of flowers to honey.

 

[Dr_Floyd]

No experience using honeysuckle blooms in mead, but plenty experience drinking it. More than 10 years ago when I was living in Northern VA, there existed a place way out in Sperryville called "The Smokehouse Winery". It was run by a guy named John Hallberg who made an excellent honeysuckle metheglin. I'd drive all the way from Fairfax and back with several bottles of his perfectly aged mead, happy as a little kid with a new toy. Drinking one whole bottle by myself was very easy and his semi-sweet mead never left me with a hangover. Unfortunately, his meadery is no longer in business but I have some very good memories of John's wine.

I'm assuming John used the flowers for aroma, added to the secondary much as a beer would be dry-hopped. Honeysuckle flowers have a very sweet nectar inside, but with a honey overtone, you may never realize that specific taste because of the ratio of flowers to honey.

Thanks for the info! My Lactomel turned out drier than expected and I despise back-sweetening (I won't be back-sweetening) so I'm hoping the honeysuckle will be the very thing I need to get some of that sweet back. I'm also hoping that my alcohol content (probably 14%) will help extract some of the honeysuckle flavor, so I should theoretically get more than just the smell but I'm willing to just find out the hard way regardless, it's only 1 gallon after all.

 

[SkeletorMob]

I despise back-sweetening (I won't be back-sweetening)

As a new brewer I'd love the hear your thoughts behind this perspective! If you wouldn't mind indulging me to that I'd appreciate it!

 

[Myseri]

I have a gallon of this going right now, not even a week in the primary.

I used one lb of flowers, a lb of white sugar, and a single gallon of water, and some champaign yeast. I know I probably could have used more flowers, but I was getting eaten alive by chiggers while picking them (not sure it was worth the trouble in all honesty). I figured this would give me a flavor that I can at least determine whether it was worth the effort and if I decide it was, I can go stronger next time.

I also took about 1/2 lb and threw them in a secondary of clover honey mead to see what that does.

 

[Dr_Floyd]

I just got the dried honeysuckle flowers in the mail so I'll be adding them to secondary in the next few days. It should be interesting.

 

[Masbustelo]

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques81.asp Here is a Jack Keller recipe for Honeysuckle wine.

 

[Dr_Floyd]

In case anyone is wondering, honeysuckle does in fact contain fermentable sugars. Adding my honeysuckle tea has restarted fermentation in my batch and a nice cloud of yeast activity is visible around the hop bag.