Raw Honey

[CM4OSU]

Anyone ever used raw, unfiltered honey in a mead? It seems like this is as close as one could get to an ancient-type brew. I would pour it through a tea strainer I suppose when I went to bottle, but I'm curious how the wax bits, pollens, and other bits might interact. I found a site that sells a raw, never heated honey in several varieties, and I might give it a try in the next month or so. So, experiences?

 

[Q2XL]

Yes-That is usually the choice to make meads. The more natural the honey the better.

 

[ExoticMeadMaker]

the wax, pollen, and other bits will sink or float, just rack around it

 

[Onihige]

Accually, in an old Swedish recipe they'd use the whole wax cake thingie. I'll see if I can find it and translate it. I think it was from the 1500's.

Nope, I can't find it anywhere anymore. But if I remember correctly, they'd boil (or just heat, not sure. Probably boil, though.) the wax cake with water, and then crack an egg in it to see how it floated, and use that as an estimation on how strong it was and how long it should be aged. No mention of yeast, of course.

 

[Jayblefty]

I have made sorbet before and to get the a nice creamy texture you have to have just enough sugar in your syrup. You float a whole egg in the shell to see how much of it pokes out of the top of the syrup. It is just like a hydrometer reading but a bit more primitive. Maybe that's what you mean instead of crack an egg into it? I don't see egg yolk fermenting well in a mead!

 

[Onihige]

Maybe, it was years since I read the recipe.

 

[Bugeaud]

Well, honey actually acts as a natural preservative, so it shouldn't hurt as far as fermentation is concerned, but idk about flavour.... and actually the ancients boiled everything. In a 16th century mead recipe I read (I forget where, easy to find though) they boiled the water, honey, and spices all together, because, simply, the water most people had access to back then was not sanitary, and needed to be boiled, or else there was a serious and almost certain risk of contamination.

 

[tweake]

the big problem i find is the wax floats. this can means the wax can get stuff growing on it if left for long time exposed to air. it MAY limit o2 intake as it tends to make a layer between air and must.
i sieve it out as much as i can, which can be difficult if its large chunks of comb. really need to munch the comb up into fine bits first.
very fine bits of wax are very hard to get out with racking. ideally need a filter.

pollen is a non-issue as its with the honey anyway so no different to honey in the jar.

 

[CM4OSU]

This all sounds good. The site I found offers raw honey in the comb, and filtered without wax. They said that the honey will usually crystalize when purely raw. My goal here was to make a mead with honey from my home state (New Mexico) and try my luck at making some local flavor mead. Perhaps with some green chile...