This is a recipe in progress for a sparkling ginger mead.  I’m adding all my thought processes and decisions here.  I’m making it for my friend Cynthia, unless she tells me she doesn’t like ginger… Sanitize EVERYTHING, except the spice bag, which doesn’t sanitize well so I boil it.  Spatula, [...]

 Can you answer this riddle? I am man’s treasure, taken from the woods, Cliff-sides, hill-slopes, valleys, downs; By day wings bear me in the buzzing air, Slip me under a sheltering roof-sweet craft. Soon a man bears me to a tub. Bathed, I am binder and scourge of men, bring [...]

Talking with Lori Titus at The Bee Folks this morning (as I was picking up thirty pounds of buckwheat honey) she mentioned that their honey had been Star-K certified, and have been since 2009 – and I realized there’s a whole world out there I know nothing about.  Not that that’s [...]

I’m getting to brew a recipe from last year’s American Homebrewer Association’s national competiton – the Underwood’s “Blasphemy at GobblersRoost” (you’ll need an AHA login to view their Homebrewopedia); it’s a sack with buckwheat honey, raisins and oak aged with whiskey.  In getting ready, I’ve been mulling over yeast starters and [...]

This is a couple of years old, and very chatty, but I apparently used it as a class handout some time ago.  I do a number of things differently now, but this might still be useful…it’s copyrighted, folks. Elspeth Payne Class Handout A plug for varietals (different kinds of honey), [...]

This is an example of retroengineering to create competition documentation.  I don’t recommend it.  It’s true that when I created this recipe, which has always done well in competition, I took historical recipes into consideration.  I did not, however, take notes.  Back then I didn’t even keep a notebook.  When [...]

 http://www.newstarget.com/021857.html Following the mysterious, accelerating collapse of honeybees across North America and Europe — a condition dubbed “Colony Collapse Disorder” — ConPfuzer, a top pharmaceutical company, has announced a new, patented medication designed to treat the disorder by drugging honeybees with psychotropic chemicals. ConPfuzer shares rose $14 in trading today [...]

 I don’t have a source noted on this. I am not sure which of several sources I found it in  Average sugar content of honey:  Fructose (d-fructose) 38.5% Dextrose (d-glucose) 31.0%  Sucrose (table sugar) 1.5% Maltose 7.2% Other higher carbohydrates 4.2%

 This is a basic mead recipe from a class I taught in 2009.  Now, I could not possibly break it down this simply, but thinking like this got me started and served me reasonably well for a lot of years.  Honey: 2.5 – 4 lbs per gallon of water. Water: [...]