Brewing Education: Choosing Your Honey

Being one third of the basic ingredients of mead your selection of honey is very important and has a direct influence on the quality and taste of your end product. Although you can use pretty much any type of honey, some are definitely better candidates than others.

First what do we mean by type of honey? A type, or varietal, of honey is determined by what kind of blossoms the bees who produced the honey were allowed to "feed" on. Clover honey was made by bees whose primary diet was pollen from clover plants, so on and so forth. The type of honey can have anywhere from a small to a significant impact on the flavor of your mead based on the varietal you use. "Fruity" honey (raspberry, orange blossom, cactus) will help accentuate fruit flavors in a mead for example, while stronger honeys (buckwheat, wildflower) can impact a more intense sweetness to a mead compared to one at the same sweetness level that used a milder honey. The most commonly used honey in mead are clover and/or wildflower since they are both sweet and tend to not overly influence the end flavor of your brew.

The next thing to consider is the quality of the honey. Mead is definitely one of those things where the quality of the ingredients of what you put into it will dictate, to an extent, the quality of your final product. If you use high quality honey you will get a better mead out of it than a lower quality honey will yield. You want to make sure you like the color, taste, and aroma of the honey you are going to use because those factors are going to heavily dictate the color, taste, and aroma of your end mead. If you plan on making a lot of mead it may also be cost effective for you to consider looking at local apiaries (bee keepers/honey producers) to buy in bulk. This will get you a large amount of good quality honey for a reasonable price. We would also recommend making sure you purchase filtered honey to reduce the chance of introducing unknown microorganisms to your brew.

As we hinted to in the last paragraph, the physical characteristics of the honey you use are important as well. Lighter colored honey will producer a lighter hued mead which will get darker with the darker the honey you use. While this is purely aesthetic, visual appeal is definitely something you want to strive for in your brews especially if you plan on making a commercial enterprise out of this hobby. The aroma of the honey is usually going to be one of the most prominent scents you will get from the finished mead which can affect the taste somewhat (olfactory scents affecting taste reception and all that) and is also one of the first physical sensations a drinker of your mead will experience, and you want that first experience to be pleasant. Lastly the taste of the honey is, overall, the single most important factor in choosing honey, as it is typically the primary flavor of your brew; so if you don't like the way a honey tastes then don't use it because chances are you will not like the end result.

Affordability is also something you can consider when choosing honey since it is the primary ingredient in your mead and you use quite a bit of it per gallon of mead (typically around three pounds/gallon). This becomes more of a consideration when the scale of your operation increases however it is always a factor at any level so some research into honey types and prices is always recommended.

The next episode will feature water selection and how it can affect your brewing process.

Until then remember to stay safe and love one another!

~ The Forge Meadery