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SoCal honey sources & newbie pointers?

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Meriadoc

Worker Bee
Registered Member
Jul 6, 2005
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Folks,

Recently, while talking with an acquaintance, the subject of hobbies came up. I mentioned that I'm making mead (and thinking of brewing beer) these days, and her ears perked up. (She's a Ren Fair vet from way back, apparently, and she mourned the lack of easy availability of mead.)

She asked me for my mead recipe (!), and here's what I was thinking of getting her:

  • A reference to Schramm's book (I think I'm gonna wear mine out before it hits a stable bookcase existence...)
  • Joe's Ancient Orange recipe
  • the "first mead" recipe from Schramm
  • a strong, strong recommendation to buy the best quality honey she can find
  • a recommendation not to buy from the grocery store (it seems to me that your mead will get expensive in a hurry, if you're buying honey in 1-lb jars (at about $3-5); buying a 1-gallon to bring the unit cost down to around the $2/lb price point, or to enable buying much better honey at $3 and above, seems to make much more sense...)
  • a pointer to this site

(edited to add:) Oh yeah... she's in LA; can yall provide any pointers to good sources for honey, out that way?

Any other suggestions you can think of?

Merry
 

Brewbear

NewBee
Registered Member
May 10, 2005
959
0
0
Miller's Honey Co. definitely, Call them often....I happened there last week or so and bought clove honey in 1.5 lb at $1.50.
Depending on where your friend lives ( which area of LA) B3 in Riverside or Steinfillers in Long Beach, even tho Steinfillers is geared more toward beer brewing, you can still find plenty of yeasts and such, besides, the "hardware" is all the same.

Ted
 

Oskaar

Got Mead Partner
Administrator
Dec 26, 2004
7,874
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The OC
Hey Thread,

Steer her to gotmead.com, she can PM us SoCal folks and get herself all set up. We like having girls to brew with!

Cheers,

Oskaar
 

Meriadoc

Worker Bee
Registered Member
Jul 6, 2005
206
0
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57
Oskaar said:
Hey Thread,

Steer her to gotmead.com, she can PM us SoCal folks and get herself all set up. We like having girls to brew with!

...the only question is, what'll her husband think of ya'll? ;) :D
 

Oskaar

Got Mead Partner
Administrator
Dec 26, 2004
7,874
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The OC
He'll think we're trying to steal his wife, hell, wouldn't you? LOL But the bottom line is my group of friends that brew are all happily wed as well. I'm the only batchelor in the bunch, so the wifeys only let the hubbys out to play with the single guy every once in a while, lest they get independent minded and spark another impromptu road trip to Vegey with me. I have LOTS of excellent blackmail material from the last one ;)

Oskaar
 
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