This time of year one thing happens that has absolutely no relation to holidays: late berries (cranberries, lingonberries, rowan) spent enough time in frozen state to develop flavor worth of melomels. A gift for self in several years, something to be safely forgotten until bottling and then again.
Of course, I’ve kept those in freezer, as I don’t want to fight all the birds for rowans (note: they still had plenty, I’m not greedy) and I’m not that good at digging frozen forest floor for the rest.
How do you source your honey? I’ve always been a bit interested to try making mead or melomel, but it seems like a costly endeavor just starting out.
And are cranberries/lingon berries your favorite to use?
I used to buy directly from beekeepers (never from stores, that junk is just spoiled in most cases). Only from people you get to know personally, beekeepers are the most hardcore underground people around for some reason. They usually sell honey in meadmaking quantities much below retail. Just talk to people around, it’s abundant all over the world. And the result is totally worth it.
I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now I think; had to move out of USA at some point and lose about 300L of product (it has to age, nothing you can do - and shipping alcohol is very complicated issue) - gave it away to friends, this was quite a challenge. Then started all over and over, the oldest bottles I have now are from 2019. The best time to make mead is 10 years ago, second best is now!
Then, recently I became a beekeeper myself. Oh, this is addictive stuff. My beehives are smart homes now, I can listen to the sounds of bees and check their environment from home and I’m going to start selling the system to other beekeepers within weeks. And something like this happens to anyone who gets into beekeeping, it drives you crazy. I won’t be selling honey myself for some time though, as I’ve only started recently and all I get goes into mead I can produce myself until the families grow enough, who knows how long it will take?
At least I’ve learned the ins and outs of the trade, why exactly honey from somebody you trust is completely different from retail anonymous “local honey” jar in store (or much worse, imported ones). There are quite objective shortcuts that should not be done but are economically attractive.
Thank you for the info!
Oh, got carried away and missed another question. I’m actually throwing all good quality stuff in melomels, there are no favorites really. Other than Vaccinium uliginosum (English words for berries are terribly misleading, used interchangeably for pretty much all berries of same color - so these are usually called “blueberries”, but that’s not what is called “blueberries” in USA, for example) berries that result in something that shames wine made of grapes - so much cheaper, literally grows in most unfarmable places, melomel tastes similarly but better, and no pretense about “grape locality” and “northern slope” - just good stuff, every time.
Cranberries and lingonberries are kind of staple berries here, rowan is less known but also abundant and tastes great. Other hidden treasures I’ve found include hawthorn, ribes, and (very unexpectedly) hippophae. Now it’s time for imported citrus fruits (skins are best part for melomel) but I’m all out of started base mead (and almost out of space).
Thank you, I really appreciate this. Dang those sound delicious. I am going to have to look around for a beekeeper and get started.