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Who likes dark honey meads?

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porcupine73

NewBee
Registered Member
Sep 13, 2012
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Buffalo, NY
I've read varying things about dark honey meads. I obtained some darkish honey from my local source (don't know for sure the source, but it was pretty dark, like buckwheat dark).

I had a 5 gallon lot from Nov 2012 that I just racked for bottling. I sampled it. It definitely needs more aging, but the flavor was very interesting, and complex, like a molasses almost smokey kind of flavor. I thought it wasn't too bad, to early to drink, but with age maybe better?

I want to experiment with more batches of dark honey meads but I'm afraid of wasting precious honey if it's going to come out nasty.
 
I've got a couple of dark honey meads on the go at the moment. One with Greek honey, which was pretty much black, that I racked a few weeks ago. It stopped fermenting 1.014, so I added a bit of sugar to bring it to 1.016, and it fermented back down to 1.014 again. Seems like some dark honeys have a lot of unfermentable sugars in them. The other's with a Mexican honey. Still in the primary. Obviously both too early to tell how they'll turn out, but I'm quite hopeful for them. The Greek honey had quite an earthy taste, whilst the Mexican was almost spicy.
 
Thanks, those are interesting ideas. I didn't know about the boiling / caramelizing of the honey. I was thinking more of the different 'varieties' of honey such as buckwheat and thistle.

I saw some people saying for buckwheat it needs to be a western (US) buckwheat, that the eastern doesn't produce as good a mead.

I'm going to try some with thistle honey, that seems a little darker, maybe a bit darker than amber, but without going full out to say buckwheat right away.
 
porcupine73 said:
Thanks, those are interesting ideas. I didn't know about the boiling / caramelizing of the honey. I was thinking more of the different 'varieties' of honey such as buckwheat and thistle.

I saw some people saying for buckwheat it needs to be a western (US) buckwheat, that the eastern doesn't produce as good a mead.

I'm going to try some with thistle honey, that seems a little darker, maybe a bit darker than amber, but without going full out to say buckwheat right away.
Click to expand...
Well I can't say for certain, but the darkest one I've seen a picture of is Avocado and that looked as dark as molasses in the picture....
 
In the midatlantic in the US we have an upcoming tuplip poplar flow, its pretty dark and makes wonderful mead. I have tried some buckwheat honey, some batches were good, others we couldnt finish the small bottle it was so rough. We try to delevlope a taste for it but no so much. We are planting it again this year, more to give the bees some pollen and nectar during the July dearth around here but if we get a little of it mixed in with fall wildflower mead I think it will be veyy good. WVMJ
 
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