'honey water' for brewing?

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alice-edmund

alice-edmund

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I keep bees - and when you do your 'harvest' you also get a collection of wax 'cappings' and honey (and dead bees usually) which is pretty rubbish. This is used to make make mead by some folk. Any reason why I can't wash the honey out of the wax and crud; heat it a bit to sterilise and brew from it? I have a Geordie Export kit going spare. I can add sugar of course if the original SG is a bit low. Thoughts welcome. I drink most things btw and all the kits I have used to date have been at least acceptable, some cracking.
 
If you mean add the honey water to the Geordie kit, then why not? I love mead, by the way, but make it from bought honey as I haven't got any hives.
Yet.
 
How much do you get? I do know some beekeepers but they don't brew and are too far away from me to get the "leftovers".
 
An Ankoù said:
If you mean add the honey water to the Geordie kit, then why not? I love mead, by the way, but make it from bought honey as I haven't got any hives.
Yet.
Click to expand...
Not sure beekeeping is worth it - largely full of retired, earnest old men. I thought it would be full of hippy chicks with low moral standards - lesson ; do more research. Good thing is that you don' t have to do much with them really if you're working. Bees that is.
 
alice-edmund said:
Not sure beekeeping is worth it - largely full of retired, earnest old men. I thought it would be full of hippy chicks with low moral standards - lesson ; do more research.
Click to expand...

For "beekeeping" read "The Homebrew Forum", LOL.
 
My in-laws farm has as couple of hives owned by a local beekeeper. I don't know if he actually makes mead from the washings but my father-in-law mentioned that they'd been discussing it. Some of my nicer meads have been low abv, around 7%, so should work well and used to boast a beer kit should be fine too, once pasteurised.
 
My wife's a bee keeper and with the exception of one bloke who we introduced to beekeeping all the local beekeepers are young(ish) women, I'll skip over morals as I could get in deep water. I've brewed some mead and added honey to raise the og of a brew all with good success.
 
OK; well 5l of the honey 'washings' had an SG of 1.175 - so with the Geordie Scottish Export kit and dilution I now have 22l fermenting swiftly at starting SG of 1.050. Anyone think I should flavour it with anything else - or just leave it as kit and honey?
Loads of washings left; going to see if there is a 'honey beer' recipe.
 
Hi alice
alice-edmund said:
Loads of washings left; going to see if there is a 'honey beer' recipe.
Click to expand...
... a few years ago, back when USA had a "cool" president who wanted be seen as just like the rest of their society, the White House beers (and the recipes they shared to let people brew them) became quite popular for a while ... if you're up for having a go at extract brewing, you could probably include however much honey-water would equate to 1lb of honey into a recipe like that :?:

Cheers, PhilB
 
alice-edmund said:
I keep bees - and when you do your 'harvest' you also get a collection of wax 'cappings' and honey (and dead bees usually) which is pretty rubbish. This is used to make make mead by some folk. Any reason why I can't wash the honey out of the wax and crud; heat it a bit to sterilise and brew from it? I have a Geordie Export kit going spare. I can add sugar of course if the original SG is a bit low. Thoughts welcome. I drink most things btw and all the kits I have used to date have been at least acceptable, some cracking.
Click to expand...

Sugar water is sugar water, it would work. But if you would want anything more out of it, I wouldn't heat it too much, just enough to get it more fluid. You want some of the aroma and taste left.
 

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