Honey Fermentability

I think you're also going to see some variability based on the quality of the honey and how filtered it is (Raw Honey is not filtered as much so still contains pollen and other stuff).

Because a lot of the cheap honey for retail sale is coming from Asian countries with dubious regulations, and may be heavily cut with corn syrup or other sugars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/larryo...is-worlds-third-most-faked-food/#3285f07e4f09

 

Most people rely upon apparent attenuation rather than real attenuation, so in that sense most if not all honeys will reach an FG <1.000 unless the yeast hits its alcohol tolerance first, which is also likely at >9% ABV. But for small meads like the one you just made, you should reliably hit FG 0.992-0.997 as you experienced, which for basic intents & purposes is >100% "attenuation" (apparent of course), a.k.a, "fermentability".

 

I just started mead this year, and I actually use Brewcipher for my recipes. I know the yeast is not in it that I use, but I can find a yeast that has a high tolerance and use that. Will it be spot on? Probably not. But I have tried learning it as I go. I do not like the other mead calculators I can find, so it works for me and I have found I am keeping way better notes. I like this, as I am kind of playing with the same thing. Same honey, same yeast, same volume, but different additions. You, or at least I, wouldn't think that a small hop addition to mead would make the yeast act different, but I have noticed this. So while note exactly the same, it is something I am doing by more of a trial and error method.

 

Yeah, I did notice that. With the notes I have taken, I have started to have a better idea of what to expect. I will probably go in and make that change to honey. To me, BC is just easier to use, and better because, while not 100% accurate, it is better then the online calculators I have found that say all my meads are 23% ABV... Couple how well I know BC with brewing beer, and I am able to figure out roughly where I can expect to be given particular combinations.

 

I would be interested to see what the attenuation rate is like for other honeys, if you ever feel like doing that.

 

Buckwheat would be interesting to see. Or even just two wildflower honeys harvested from different regions (say the NJ Pine Barrens honey you can get from Keystone, and a wildflower honey out west) just to see the difference.

 

Buckwheat and clover honey are not ideal. I’m a biggest fan of blueberry harvest honey but #1 for me is wildflower honey. I only buy honey from NJ to avoid that Chinese corn syrup fake honey.

 

@VikeMan table 7.3 in Schramm's Compleat Meadmaker has some values of interest but not the whole set of data you want.

Water content can go from 13.4% to 22.9 %. Sugars higher than maltose can go up to 8.5%. Ash can be up to 1%. Undetermined (whatever that is) can go up to 14%

I know some commercial meadmakers that love Orange Blossom honey. They also love Tupelo, but that is so expensive now. Honey is a byproduct for commercial polinators. They get paid to have their give in the orange groves, the honey is secondary. There are no Tupelo fruits or nuts to my knowledge, hence part of the expense.

 

I've always wanted to mess around with some of the more esoteric honeys from Bee Raw (www.beeraw.com), but they are way too expensive to make mead with. Can't imagine dropping $50 for 1 gallon of short mead. I'm assuming that a lot of those honeys either come from folks running nurseries or seed fields for the niche plants they come from.

I actually looked into almond honey when I heard about all the hive theft out in the California almond growing area. Turns out it's too dark and bitter (even more than buckwheat) to sell as is, so it's either used in industrial baking products on the very low end of the scale, or mixed into animal feed.

There is/was some sort of crazy Anarchist urban beekeeper in DC that sold single neighborhood honeys. Always wanted to try out something from near the National Arboretum or Botanical Gardens, but again, very expensive.

 

It would have to be from some kind of mono-culture growing of some type, to be able to guarantee a majority from one flower type. Honeybees can have a 2+ mile radius for foraging.

My wife kept bees for a few years and took an apiary class at the local 4H club. One of the teachers told a story about discovering blue and red colored "honey" in some of the comb in a hive. The bees must have been visiting a local candy manufacturer or something and somehow collecting artificially colored sugar syrup.

 

I've heard about that. Way easier from them to collect syrup run off in one place to meet caloric needs of the hive than it is for them to get a bit of nectar from thousands of flowers.

 

Other cool thing that person did was list the season of each neighborhood hive when it was collected. Fall/winter honey is much richer than Spring/Summer.

 

Around here, the primary fall wildflowers/weeds are Goldenrod. We could smell the difference in our hives once that was blooming.

 

Around here, there's too much going on within a bee's reach to say anything's primary. Urban landscape and everything in every park and folks little front yard and balcony, in a place where folks want to keep up some appearances and always have something in bloom. Especially when the National Arboretum and Botanical Gardens are within their reach, it's a complex honey, each jar a moment in the time it was harvested from the hive.
Still, at $20 for an 8oz jar, too rich for my bones.

 

The undertermined for raw honey would be bits of wax, bee parts, and so on. Once saw a 55 gallon drum of raw honey opened, and there was a lot of stuff floating on top.

Edit - UC Davis might be a place to send a question to.

 

If it's not ultra filtered, it can be wax. Chances are it's less gross in concept than the bee puke we love as honey.