Honey vodka

[Firedragon]

Hi. I was thinking of making a mead style wash and distilling it. Just wondering if anyone else has done so before? And if it worked out.

[kiwikeg]

bro as a beekeeeper/apairist. I have tried every way possible to make drinkable honey alcohol. with various results
The term mead covers the whole range from piss weak honey flavoured beer to sweet or dry wines.
Heres what i can tell you
1- fermentations take forever months not weeks.
2 honey is more acidic than viniger so only allow contact with glass or stainless.
3-bad tasting honey= bad tasting mead
4 there is no hang over like a mead hangover- mead hangovers are probily the reason vikings were badtempered s@#$%^s.

its really hit or miss and honey aint cheap to buy. so probily the easiest way is to flavour up a neutral with a nice honey.

[Firedragon]

I've made mead before and had what I call success, I also realize it takes a longer ferment time. I've used rasin and sultanas in small amounts for yeast nutrient and found the ferment to be quicker and better tasting. I really want to know how it would distill and what taste it would have. Thank u for your comments. Sounds like this might be a fairly uncommon idea, I'm thinking I'd do it with more flavor than a vodka but didn't know what to call it.

[kiwikeg]

Okay fire dragon - you got me thinking again about mead so I have just gently melted 3kg of some Premium honey. From a suburban garden hive. melted honey in 3 litres of water over just enough heat to disolve any suger crystals to much heat darkens honey and destroys flavour.
once cooled its going to be poured onto my millet whiskey ujsm grain bed with backset from the wash going thru the still now.
so there will be a control for taste comparism- millet whiskey with white sugar and millet whiskey with honey.
my millet ujsm is more of a grainy vodka than a whiskey.
i can feel the pounding mead hangover already :-D

[Firedragon]

Thanks kiwikeg. I'll be very curious to know the results. :text-thankyoublue:

[kiwikeg]

Cool it will take a while but its bubbling in the airlock already :D

[home_brewer]

Just racked a mead to secondary this has got me thinkin

[Firedragon]

Awesome to hear home brewer. I don't have a large enough carboy to do a decent batch yet. Will get one soon, as I like mead and mellomels. Thought distilling some would be an interesting project cause I've never heard of it before (which I think is odd).

[BackyardBrewer]

If you like honey and you're a fan of infusions like me do this oat and honey infused vodka:
http://www.chow.com/recipes/10873-oat-and-honey-vodka

Throw it together with some baileys, shake, add a stick of cinnamon to serve = the cookie martini!

[kiwikeg]

Ran the honey/millet ujsm was yesterday.
First thing was this was a really FAST ferment for honey, the grain bed must of acted like a yeast bomb and over came the honeys natural antimicrobal/antifungal propertys.
I ran it in my detuned fractional still as my potstills boiler had gone kaput.
Strong Flavours are there but they are more toffee/butterscotch like than honey and the flavour changes marked and distint thru the cuts.
Its not unpleasant so will use this for a liquer base instead of neutral.
wont do it again unless i have some mead or excess honey I want to use up.

[Jesiah]

Could you give me a step by step break down of your process? I'm about to start making my own liqueurs and would love a good base to start with.

Also Maxwell wines in adelaide make a mead, spiced mead and a mead liqueur. They all taste pretty awesome, but yeah the hangover isn't the best. The liqueur didn't give much of a hangover but it is pretty thick and also pretty pricey.

[kiwikeg]

Could you give me a step by step break down of your process? I'm about to start making my own liqueurs and would love a good base to start with.

Also Maxwell wines in adelaide make a mead, spiced mead and a mead liqueur. They all taste pretty awesome, but yeah the hangover isn't the best. The liqueur didn't give much of a hangover but it is pretty thick and also pretty pricey.

Hi sorry about the delay in replying
I added the honey to my millet ujsm brew as I was done experimenting with that. see thread at.. http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 34&t=26602

[invisigoth]

Also Maxwell wines in adelaide make a mead, spiced mead and a mead liqueur. They all taste pretty awesome, but yeah the hangover isn't the best.

<shiver> i've had the maxwell stuff before, and i found it horrid, a bit like calling strongbow cider. the last decent commercial mead i had was from mt vincent in mudgee.

i've experimented with different honeys and different yeasts, and although it can take months to ferment, most of mine finish fermenting after 1-2 weeks. here's a couple of tips - mead from leatherwood honey smells revolting, manuka honey is both expensive and *really* slow (had to resort to champagne yeast to dry out that one) and native bee honey has a slight smell of acetic acid, and that don't go away when you ferment (the mead is good for cooking though).

just my 2 cents :whistle:

[invisigoth]

Hi. I was thinking of making a mead style wash and distilling it. Just wondering if anyone else has done so before? And if it worked out.

no one seemed to have actually answered the question being asked. unless i misread, it appeared as though kiwikeg kinda did, but it was more like a honey spirit/whisky hybrid than a strait up mead distillation. since i'd planned on doing this any way at some point, i thought i'd give it a go. the mead has finished fermenting and has been racked to demijohns, so i'll run it next weekend. since this was to be distilled, not drunk, i didn't add the usual acid blend for balance. simple enough. 3kg of whitebox/malee blend dissolved in warm water and made up to 13l, chuck in a couple of teaspoons of "yeast nutrient" (a combination of dap and a few other things brewcraft makes. never given me any problems before, so i stick with it) and the rest of the rum distillers yeast i had in the fridge i'd recovered from first gen hooks rum that wasn't used for the second gen ....because it was there. fermented out in 10 days. i didn't feel the need to acidify in addition to the honey's natural acidity with citric.

i'll report back after it's run :pray:

[Firedragon]

Thanks invisigoth. Hope it turns out great. I'll be very interested in your results.

[invisigoth]

i'm still in the process of going through the cuts. the yield was less than expected. i suspect that had i tasted the wort/must before distilling, it would have tasted slightly sweet. i don't usualy do sg readings on my meads, it is what it is.

taste of the cuts seemed ok. the flavour wasn't unpleasant, but all of the cuts i've tasted thus far (late heads, hearts, early tails) all seemed to be fire water at 40% abv. i've never gone into the heads of anything else deep enough to say it's like methanol burn, but this is through out the run, and i was pretty careful to control the flow rate of the run from a broken stream to a pencil lead thin stream, so i don't think i smeared the heads all the way into the tails. there was a feint honey smell in there, and the last 3 jars of tails had white "jellyfish" (croweaters term :)) )

it defiantly has it's own flavour, i'm hoping it will improve with age.

[invisigoth]

welp, after blending the cuts i thought it was a bit harsh. being as it was made from honey, i kinda wanted a bit of a honey colour to it, i oaked it for a month, then adjusted to 40%abv and bottled it. i had a sip today and the harshness has gone. it's actually quite pleasant. you can tell it's been oaked without it being in the least bit woody.

[BackyardBrewer]

I love the polish honey vodka.
If its anything like Medos I'm in
http://www.drunkard.com/bbs/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=51223

[SBB]

WTF :o... Modern Drunkard Forum. "Say It Loud - Say It Plowed" :laughing-rolling: :laughing-rolling:
Gotta love some of the Thread Catagories.

[BackyardBrewer]

Yeah, had a squizz at the "drunk dial" thread.

Don't go there.

You got some real drunk mates there BB.

Yeah I just grabbed the first link on google to the product, I'm not familiar with the site at all:-/