My honey is older than yours....

I bought 40+ kilos of old honey from a couple who just bought a farmhouse.

In Canada it's customary for a beekeeper to give the farmer AND the landowner each a case of honey at end of season... So they started finding boxes of 1kg honey containers everywhere.

I was curious if it tasted different, and he wanted to make sure I was confident nothing had gone bad, so he kept bringing me fresh spoons to dip and taste!

We have no idea how old these are, could be 10, could be maybe 20 years old... Going by the branding, I don't think the honey company is older than 30yrs max. I wish I knew, as I'd be tempted to buy lots of honey just to store!

You see if the pics that some of the honey had separated; dark and runny on top and slow and more crystalized on the bottom. The ones shown are almost the most extreme; some containers are simple a "Demerara brown"throughout.

Taste: slightly...brown sugary?? I'm not sure how to describe it... It really tastes and smells like honey still! Just more... Brown. A little less fragrant than fresh honey perhaps, but then my fresh honey comes in a BIG 11 kg bucket, way more surface area.

Started 3gal BOMM last night (first BOMM) - see pics of ingredients and final carboy (which is now bubbling away) - doing a 1gal Cyser BOMM now with my 1388 starter and my organic Apple cider.

I'm aiming to save some 1388 starter on the fridge for future use, just to keep it on hand and save a little $. I had to order this one up through the local b&m.

I'll attach the Cyser ingredient photo too.



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Squatchy said:

I wouldn't bother saving the yeast to save some money. It doesn't work like beer. Mead is so much more stressful of an environment than is beer. The more the cells reproduce the farther away from the mother they mutate. Yeast is so cheap compared to everything else I would just start over every time.

Click to expand...

Yeast mutate!?

Ok we're talking science now... I doubt they literally mutate, but essentially you're saying they lose their ability to create the same product they can create when fresh??

Why is this? I have ginger bugs that keep going and going. Is this why LOR went to such crazy lengths to isolate yeast using things to isolate them from temperature, oxygen, etc? I'm curious now...
And 1388 isn't that expensive here, but I do like having things on hand...I can always buy another smack pack to their in the fridge I guess.
I did buy a LOT of honey, so with the speed of a BOMM I could be making a fair bit of Mead.


...I guess I like self sufficiency too...what if I move to the middle of nowhere and I want to keep making my Mead???

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Updates...

At 1 week (25/26th gravity looks to be around 1.070 on the 3 gallon... Maybe 1.066 on the 1 gallon Cyser BOMM.

Just added the second .4tsps for them (1.2 for the 3gal) a few nights ago...24i believe? Maybe 23. They were at 1.078ish then.... Just above 1.076.

Still taking longer than LOR's, but my meads always seem slow...

This time things are bubbling away quite steadily... In fact when the airlocks were dry the liquid overflowed into the airlock and at that point it was bubbling at about the same rate it is now. (I'm recalling the cyser here)

Added water to airlocks on the 25th.

I've been de-gassing almost daily. How long do you need gas for? Right till it's dry?

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Do you generally de-gas till the fermentation is done?

The 3gal is now 1.024.... still moving steadily along!!

The Cyser...well the hydrometer hits the bottom, so I'll need to top up with some other Mead to get a true reading.

I'm amazed at how long the 3 gallon takes to de-gas... Even after 5 minutes there still seems to be some gas if I try hard enough. That drill powered idea is starting to look good...



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