Making Good Mead Part II - From Board to Bucket

Making Good Mead Part II - From Board to Bucket By Pete Ricks Last month we covered the very beginning of the honey process. This month, we're going to cover how the honey makes it from the brood box where the Honeybees store it to a container that can be purchased by the consumer. Pictured to the left is an extractor. This is the where the frame boards are placed to be spun around, which extracts the honey. First though, the wax that the bees have placed over the honey to preserve it must be removed. Virl tells me that the cap honey is supposed to be the best, although I have never brewed with nor tasted it. Maybe next batch. Virl tells me that just about every beekeeper has their own method of extracting and packaing honey, and I have found this to be true in my coversations with various beekeepers. Some will heat the honey up over 100 degrees, while others will use more stringent, cold filtering methods. I like Virl's methods because I know the honey will be pure and natural. From Board to Bucket When the honey is ready to be harvested, the boards are removed and placed in the uncapper, which is the long, rectangular box show at the left. Virl tells me that he has a Silver Queen uncapper that can handle 40 frame boards at a time. This uncapper has heated knives that vibrate along the frame boards, stripping the caps off of the honeycombs. Of course, Virl doesn't mix the various varieties of honey that he produces in this device. For example, he harvests all of of his desert honey in a batch, and likewise with the citrus. Virl turned out two kinds of Mesquite honey this year and both were delicious, yet varied depending on the location where the nectar was collected. This is one of the neat things about sampling the varius varieties of honey in your area. Although they may be a base style like Mesquite, you will find variations depending on where the honey is collected. Seems like every batch is unique in some way or another, which in turn makes your fermented beverage unique. Filtration Once the caps are stripped off of the frame boards, Virls places 20 of them in the extracter show at the top and spins them around for 8 minutes to drain the honey out. The extracter that he uses can handle 20 at a time. Once he has run all of the boards through, he uses devices called "baffles" to seperate the wax and wood pieces out of the honey. He then further filters it by running the honey through a screen. The honey that I get from Virl still has some pieces in it, but that is the way I like it for my meads. Chunky and natural! From the extracter, Virl can either fill up the 5 gallon buckets, which is my container of choice, or the smaller containers like gallons and pounders. A 5 gallon bucket will produce anywhere from 15 to 25 gallons of mead depending on the desired sweetness and alcohol strength. The smaller containers are nice for sampling as you can get a little taste of each batch and compare. Getting honey from your local beekeeper is the best honey you can get as it is fresh and natural. Next time, we will be covering the various honey varieties that are produced in North America. Until then, Wassail!