Lavender Mead? How Much Lavender

[ClownPrince]

Hi Folks,

Bit of advice needed.
Got designs on making a Lavender and Blueberry Mead. I've got all my honey and a bag of blueberries, i just need to harvest the lavender from the garden.
I've never used lavender before, so I have questions.
I presume i use the leaf and not the flower. Am i right?
How much (in grams i suppose) would you advise? I'm inclined to err on the side of caution with this, but I don't even have a rough idea.
Obviously I will boil the Lavender, but is there any other preparation advice (Dry it first? Powder it?)

Finally, is there any other additions that you advise. I have all the normal mead-y stuff in (Cloves, Cinnamon...)

Thanks in advance.

 

[Hagrid]

I’d be tempted to use a tea as your diluting water to which you add your honey. Maybe have a play with lavender tea as a drink to find the strength and then scale it up to your batch size.

You tend to use the buds rather than the leaf with lavender in cooking (stews, cakes and biscuits.) a quick google search tells me this is the same for tea too.

I hope this helps, I might have a go at this for my next mead too. :)

 

[MonkeyMick]

I couldn't give you an amount to use, but be careful as its easy to go overboard and end up with something that's pretty medicinal in taste and difficult to correct without blending intk other meads/wines...