Each day, we get questions from customers standing at our tasting bar asking about our process, products, or mead in general. Often, it’s the same question someone else has asked. So, we decided to gather some of them together and answer them here.
Topic: Mead Making Process Questions
Question #1 – How is mead brewed? Is mead distilled?
The process of making mead is often confusing to people who have visited other craft beverage making facilities. There is a difference between brewing, fermenting, and distilling.
Beer is brewed – grains are heated to release the sugars before fermentation. Because honey is a simple sugar, brewing or heating/cooking is not needed to release the sugars.
We are also not distilling. Distilling is used for “hard” liquors to concentrate the alcohol and raise the proof. (Yes, mead can be distilled. There are several distilleries who are making distilled honey liquor. Windsor Run in Hamptonville, NC makes “Killer Bee” distilled mead.)
Mead is fermented meaning yeast is used to split the sugar molecule into alcohol and CO2. Beer is also fermented after the brewing process.
Question #2 - How much honey do you use? How much honey is in a bottle of mead?
We use quite a bit of honey. In one year, we purchased over 5 TONS of honey to make mead. Each 2000-liter batch of mead base uses 21 five-gallon buckets of honey (that’s 1260 lbs of honey!).
A bottle of mead contains about 9 oz (liquid measure) of honey to 17 oz of water. So, just over a cup.
Question #3 - Do you have your own bees? Where are the bees? Where are the grapes?
We do have a few hives of bees on the property. With the amount of honey we use in a year, it would take close to 400 hives to supply all the honey we need. That’s way more than a full-time job worth of hives! We do have several NC apiaries that we purchase from who each have over 100 hives. Did you know that NC has one of the largest beekeepers’ associations in the country?
Nope, no grapes. The only mead we’ve made with grapes is Honeyed Cloer with grapes from Cloer Family Vineyards. They grew the grapes, pressed them for their own wines, and we got the skins and pulp to put in with the honey and water.
Question #4 – How do you get special honeys like Sourwood or Meadowfoam? What’s the difference between those and wildflower honey?
Wildflower honey is code for “we don’t know where the bees went”. Wildflower is used for any honey with multiple sources of nectar. Most honey that you find is wildflower.
Special honeys, like sourwood or meadowfoam, come from an area where there is a lot of one type of plant growing. The beekeepers know about what time of year that plant will bloom and can move their hives to that area to get as much of the one kind of nectar/honey in the hive. Honey is then harvested quickly to keep the special separate. This is also how some crops, like almond trees, are pollinated.
Question #5 – Where do you get your fruit? What kind of apples do you use? Are these peaches local?
We actually use fruit juices for our fruit. We do not have the equipment/time/desire to process fresh fruit other than occasional peppers for Kickin’ Cranberry Orange. We get our juices from a distributor who combines different varieties of juice into a blend. This makes it possible to carry Honeyed Peach all year round, rather than just in the summer when peaches are available.
Next time: Mead Tasting Questions
If you have questions, we are always happy to answer them. Not everyone knows about or understands the difference when we are talking about mead!