The second product I ever made was a "honey" based distillation, but instead of using commercial grade honey, I used the wash that was left over after processing combs from my own hives for honey and wax. There was still a lot of honey and nectar left in them. Adding the comb to boiling water melts the wax and it separates to the surface and then straining the remaining fluid of all other detritus. I fermented that into a "dirty mead" then distilled it. I was impressed how much the result tasted like the way a hive smells, and totally had that deep honey characteristic you spoke of. Not a great drink though, the flavours were too strong and dominated even when mixing just little bits into other product. However, 14-15 months of age on American oak has turned it into something very drinkable and totally unique and enjoyable. Totally recommend playing with honey if available.
Great thinking. The ability to use what would be normally be wasted is great. I am venturing down the same track but I have a shit load of Manuka honey retention samples and the like. This stuff is really expensive top grade honey. I have made spiced meade and distilled that.
I've been making mead for years. I actually go into distilling BECAUSE of mead. What happened was "life getting in the way" of maintaining some carboys I was using to age traditional meads. A combination of me neglecting to watch the fluid levels in the airlocks and a power failure (I live in the tropics) resulted in over 15 gallons of mead getting oxidized to hell. With the price of honey these days, throwing away the mead wasn't an option. So I decided to distill it. The most surprising thing was how much of the honey aroma was left over vs how little of the honey taste. Also, at 14-18% I had A LOT of distillate at the end. Now I'm distilling almost as much as I am making mead. But I am experimenting with flavoring a sugar wash with honey or dry mead.
One of my favorite things I tried was a brandy aged with walnut shells. I think aging this with walnut shell would be nice as well. Honey and nuts go really well together.
That actually sound like a very awesome and perfect idea! And so much, that I'm considering trying out mead distillation just to try to get that blend of flavors! I used to love honey covered peanuts and OMG now I have to figure this out!
Oh man ! You got my mind going into overdrive. Never thought of aging using nut shells. Think I will be test aging neutral spirit (vodka/everclear) with different nut shells to see what flavors I will be working with.
I did some hickory smoked corn and barley for a whiskey. I had a bunch of hickory nuts as well, and threw them in the smoker as well to help layer the hickory flavor and char them up a bit. I’ve got some of the pieces in with the spirit as it ages now. Love this idea so much. We are black walnut fools around here!
Very inspirational and well described work. Thanks I'm a Newbie Beekeper (2 or 3 years) and i have noticed that my bees make a dark honey called "honeydew", or "forest honey" from the oak trees (and probably other trees as well), at certain times of year, It tastes really woody probably has more of the tanins that you would expect from a cask aged spirit ? Maybe worth investigating as an additive to the Raw vodka like spirit ? Hmmm...
Hi Jesse, I keep bees and have been making mead for many years. I started to distill some of it a couple of years ago. I have tried the whole 'ageing in glass with oak' thing, but would highly recommend storing it in a barrel if possible. The difference is incredible
@@user-dm1tv6nl2e My experience with trying to "Age" in glass is that I can get the colour and the oakiness, but I've never achieved the smoothness that I can get from a barrel. I've always put this down to the fact that the liquid and the oak both need to breathe and to quote the scotch whisky distillers "Once you put the spirit into glass it stops ageing". It might be that my technique is lacking but I end up with an astringent taste at the back of the throat which I don't get with a barrel. Hope this helps
@@theironduke9214 It does. I've had a couple of thoughts on that: 1. Does any part of wood need to be exposed to both air and the liquid to achieve breathing? 2. When aging in glass (even if on chips or otherwise) my assumption is that the jar is sitting in someone's basement. If so, the liquid is unlikely to see extreme temperature swings. I associate the transportation of liquid into and out of the wood to these swings. So maybe sticking that jar in a shed or barn (or heck, an attic) might add some aging effects? If you made a really stinking well fit wood lid to the jar, maybe you could get both effects?
In Portugal they produce a clear fruit spirit called Medronho, into which they can add all sorts of flavour additions. Honey Medronho is very sweet with the added honey and good for shots. Best one I've tried had fresh black cherries. Tasty stuff!
The peated whiskey with a honey finish sounds amazing! Now a friend used to make what she called her Earl Grey tea Mead. The tea added a nice tannic element with the bergamot hint to the mead. This would be an interesting distilled spirit. The guys over at the MB Tribe played with a mead barrel finished whiskey that I think sounds similar, but getting your hands on mead barrels is almost impossible. But can be a fun idea to play with on a small scale at home! Make your own mead, age in a small barrel and then use that barrel to agree your peated whiskey in...
Tea meads are great. I made a lapsang souchong bochet mead last year. Aged on oak for a few months and after only that long it was so good I think only two bottles made it to a year 😂
Thanks for creating these videos! I recently brewed Dogfish Head’s T’ej recipe (a play on an Ethiopian honey wine/beer using gesho as the bittering agent) and distilled most of the batch. I aged one jar of the distillate with rum seasoned toasted Am oak and the other jar with T’ej seasoned toasted French oak and they both tasted pretty great! The former has much brighter, honey, floral, vanilla notes while the latter has very rich, dark fruit, tootsie rolls, star anise notes. It was a really successful experiment!
I have been brewing mead for 10 years, don't have a still. But this is amazing and i would love to try it. Mead usually gets aged a good long while. Do you think that ageing the mead for 3 years before running it through the still would make a difference cos it makes a huge difference to the harshness of mead treated like wine.
I made a methgelin for a couple of buddies of mine who got married back in 2008. It was rocket fuel. I kept testing it every few months starting out, and it seemed like it just needed more age on it. After 11 years I finally marked it up as a loss. A good friend of mine wanted to run it through a still. That was where the magic happened! It came out like a gin, with an undercurrent of sweetness from the honey at about 75% abv . We proofed it down to 100 proof with honey syrup. Fortunately both buddies were still married to their wives😅. I got to give them their anniversary "meads", only it was 11 years later. They loved it. I do not recommend doing it, even though it was a neat learning experience.
It's not so bad distilled after a few weeks I may have to try it aged for a while. I've been mead making for three or so years now and distilling since Christmas on a small pot still and it's just as addictive as mead making
Dude, I'm in the US and can't legally distill yet until the law changes, but I enjoy your passion for teaching and your wisdom to know that you don't know everything and likely never will. As someone who has learned from and worked for both a master carpenter and an excellent carpenter, I can say that you have all the hallmarks of a true master craftsman. By that I don't mean that you are simply very good at what you do. I mean that you are not only good at what you do, but you actively seek to teach others and continue to learn as well. Master craftsman will tell you that they don't know everything, will help you learn with patience and dedication, and will learn with you and ensure that you are personalizing your craft. They are both teachers and students at the same time. From my own experiences, the excellent carpenter (who is inarguably better than the master) didn't bother to teach and merely wanted results and to show off his own skills and mostly wanted someone to do the grunt work for him. The master carpenter taught, and while he wanted results, he also wanted me to learn how to consistently get excellent results and grow to become better than him. And he's frankly amazing at what he does, the second best I've ever seen, and I always enjoy working with him when we've both got time.
If you live in one of the right states you'll never get in trouble for home distilling for your own personal use, despite the fact that it remains federally illegal. It's kind of like cannabis in that sense.
@@tissuepaper9962 Oh 100% agreed, but even living in those states you can't exactly advertise that you distill at home or you can face federal charges. It's basically a "don't be an obnoxious butthole" kind of thing. And something I saw bite a guy I used to work with in the ass. He posted about it on Facebook, where he happened to be "friends" with an fbi agent, said fbi agent contacted the atf... And now that guy is sitting in a jail cell for a few years.
@@tissuepaper9962 yeah really. I mean, technically said "friend" was just doing their job, but that's just shitty. Dude was making booze, not selling guns to cartels or burning women and children alive or shooting dogs... Like a certain government funded terrorist organization that masquerades as a law enforcement agency does...
@@tissuepaper9962 oh and while posing for pictures over the bodies of said children, like a certain potential head of said terrorist organization did...
I've been making and loving honeyshine for years. My favorite is caramelizing the honey first and aging in Apple wood. It is an entirely different flavor.
Jessy, I have come to realize that this is my favorite channel on youtube. I have been reading up in the forums to prepare to buy/build a modular still, and you have been feeding me Ideas for weeks now. I was wondering if you have ever done anything with Orange Juice? I've been searching, and found many things on Orange Wine but not distilled orange wine. Would love to see a video on that. Thanks again for all the inspiration and all that you have taught me.
What I would recommend would be to make mead again with cooked honey till its caramelized. Yes it’ll be on the pricy side but it would change up the flavor profile yet again. After that, adding vanilla bean to it while its aging would be intense!
I might have tracked down a liq fairy, I am courting her and might be beginning my journey into the craft. A heavy spiced mead was one of my first ideas to give her.
@@jacobthompson1682 You come off like a forum kid who believes "SWIM" and a heavy sprinkling of euphemisms are a Protection From Law Enforcement spell. It's laughable. BATF shouldn't give a solid shit about your still unless you're selling your product. The locals may be a bit peeved when you burn down your domicile, though, so please try to not do that...
This is one of my favorites to make. I get my honey from a friend who has a bee farm. I too am a whiskey fan. The build I use is 75% honey and 25% DME. I also toss in some quick oats for mouth feel. I am trying to make a single malt as well. Mouth feel is excellent. The sprit loves the wood! A beautiful sprit indeed. I oven roasted my white oak rather than burning it. Cheers mate!
so i hobby make mead and usually back sweeten with macerated fruits. I assume you could use the honeyshine to produce liquors instead of the vodka/TPP you have in previous videos which will require less sugar to sweeten and if the fruits are paired right, could work well with the smoke from the oak you mentioned. Also the rough edges in mead settle out with time during a racking phase. This might happen with the honeyshine but also could just be carried through from the production. I'm still learning but just wanted to offer up what i have learnt. cheers for the great content
Have you ever heard of „Bärenfang“ literally „bear catch“. An old prussian liqueur. Made and sold usually by beekeepers in Germany. It’s usually just Vodka or Korn mixed with lots of honey. I would imagine it works better with what you got.
It's been wonderful to see how this experiment has gone for you! I'm far from an expert in the honey itself (or in meadmaking, I'm still a hobbyist), but the differences in honey sources is staggering. Some result in different ratios of fructose and glucose, with Tupelo honey being so high in fructose it doesn't crystalize. A lot of the flavor components are chemicals in the source nectar that just never get refined out in the honey making process that the bees do. There's also the ratio of the sources themselves and if flowers are the sole source of sugars the bees get to make honey from.
If/when you come back to the states, try securing a 5 gallon pail of Dutch gold's bakers honey (60 lbs) $100, before shipping. I discovered you from your appearance on Whiskey Tribe, when they distilled an oxidized mead, so I'm not currently on your Patreon. But, I'm very interested in seeing more of this from you and wouldn't mind contributing to this effort. Cheers
Hey Jesse, I have been doing meadandy for many years now and my favourite is adding some botanicals to a gin head when running my spirit run and that is a nice addition to a whiskey at around 80ml per finished ltr of spirit.
Check out Bochets, caramelize part of the honey before fermenting. Maybe go for some sort of braggot (mix of mead and beer) for the base to get even closer to whisky without losing those honey flavors. I have one of those little airstills, I like experementing with different meads too and when one doesn't work out I just throw it in the still to see if that can save it :D
Honey is such amazing stuff when used in making alcoholic beverages. I make a honey and cinnamon vapor infused gin using a thumper (base gin recipe is London dry with 9 botanicals) and man it is very tasty, the cinnamon and honey seems to form a delicate marriage on the nose that explodes with dark grungy notes on the pallet while preserving the gin flavor. I call it SynerG. Home distilling rocks and thank you Jesse for everything you do for the craft! Greetings from legal home distilling South Africa.
W O W !!!!! This REALLY has me excited about my project. I have been homebrewing Meads for the last 1.5 years. The Dungeons & Dragons group I'm with wondered about taking Mead to this level as the DungeonMaster has a home Still. Our plan is to brew a 6-gallon batch of Acerglyn (half Honey - half Maple Syrup) Distill 4 gallons, and bottle the last 2 gallons as an accompanying drink to the distilled product. It is inspired by one of the characters in our party: a Drunken Master Monk named Lush Doubleshot. Hence the Distilled Mead / Straight Mead " Lush's Double " Your breakdown of your process has truly inspired me that this really CAN work! I have some Oaking Sticks that I may use in the distillate to help elevate that honeyness... The experimental recipe I used to arrive at the final batch: *** 12 oz. Wildflower Honey *** 12 oz. Maple Syrup *** 1/2 tsp. Loose Leaf Orange Cream Tea *** 1/2 tsp. Tomato Paste *** 1/2 packet Lalvin EC-1118 Yeast *** Water to 1/2 Gallon. OG 1.110 fermented out to 1.004 Racked and backsweetened with 4 oz. each Honey and Maple syrup. After a month the final gravity was stable at 1.030 The final Acerglyn is incredibly clear and a dark amber hue. I look forward to seeing if I can duplicate this in the 6 gallon bucket, which I started a week ago. Thank You for this series of videos paralleling my curiosity.
@@kjdevault I ran two Acerglyns side by side... 1 with Tomato Paste, 1 without. They both fermented dry equally. The without had a very astringent taste, heavy alcohol. The WITH was smooth and delicious, with equal taste of Honey and Maple Syrup... no tomato aftertaste or by-product! Shocking and Exciting!
I made a buckwheat honey mead, that I aged on oak for 3 years. buckwheat honey has a very dark almost molasses like flavor. would be great in a peated whiskey or a rum.
Generally, but not always, Spring Honeys are lighter coloured and lighter flavoured, while Fall Honeys are darker coloured and heavier flavoured, with Summer Honeys being somewhere in the middle. Each area will have a "Flow" time (seasonal) when bees make the most honey from the flowers in the area. Modern agriculture has allowed varietal honeys from crops/orchards to be collected, which can be excellent (orange or blueberry honey), it has lead to a generic, uniform, expected taste for (Grocery Store) honey (in North America this would be Canola/Rapeseed or Clover as those are the 2 most common flowering crops). Historic honeys tended to be "whatever the bee could find," similar honeys can be found on the market today labelled as "Wild Flower" though they tend to not deviate greatly from what people expect honey to taste like. This means certain crop honeys that have unique, bold and strong flavours (Buckwheat) tend not to sell well to the general public, making them less desired, potentially cheaper, though rarer because the crop is not grown as often.
A friend of mine made an infusion with honey, mead, and Everclear, then used two pieces of American oak and one piece of medium toast French oak. He said it was almost creamy, and had a rich mouthfeel.
Speaking of melding flavours & using honey. I'd love to see your take on making something similar to Dubliner which if you're not familiar with it is a whiskey liqueur infused with honeycomb & caramel which is irresistibly moreish 😋
Yeah definitely agree unless you're raising your own Bee's or know someone that does and produce there own honey this would be very expensive. Just to make regular mead it takes about 3 lb or 1.35 kg of honey per gallon or 3.8 liters and by the time you distill say a five gallon batch you'll only end of with-2-3 gallons of spirits. Depending on the type of flowers or plants the bees have been pollinating can make a big difference what the honey can taste and color like buckwheat honey is very dark and has a molasses taste to it. Orange blossom honey more circusy golden. So if you were to make a distill mead spirit it would be really expensive specialty liquor. Would be interesting how a distilled mean version of a Brumbuie would taste like just good luck getting enough heather honey, figuring out what herbs and spices to use.
Amazing results! So with rum, a lot of the “flavor” comes from the dunder. Could you create a honey dunder for mead to boost complexity? Has me thinking that when I make a batch of mead I should let some dunder get funky for a subsequent batch. Idk.
I think that's actually a great idea. I really want to try this now. I made some distilled mead twice already and i like it but it sure could use some more flavor. A dunder could be the solution i was looking for so thanks a lot for that !
I was thinking the same thing. Honey with the blackstrap and maybe some honey added to the dunder. Hopefully between the two there will be that nice honey/floral flavor.
In the Caribbean, honey has been used a lot for deserts etc because of the warm envroment. It could have been used in your rum as a kicker. Maybe try the rum with a little of this mixed in?
Cheers Jessie Have you ever considered using charred pecans? I could send you some from Oklahoma to do with your whiskey I think it would really compliment the honey shine
Did a 100% Simpsons heavy peated malt wash. Added 5lb honey, 5lb sorghum, & 1 quart blackstrap to raise the s.g. used a rum yeast. Had a 9% abv. Double Alembic run. Proofed to 112 & added one 4 inch by 1/4"x1/4" single use bourbon wood per gallon. In a lagering frig at 55F August of 2012. Epic result. Have a few quarts filled with Marula fruit soaking in some now. Might just Airstill some of that for grins. However, the honey & sorghum were too expensive to use again d/t the end point contribution effects.
I'm a hobby mead maker and this project has been very interesting to me since I've been curious about distilled mead for a while. If I ever start my professional meadery, I would definitly want to make a distilled mead and sell it as a more exclusive product. Maybe blend normal distilled and freeze distilled. Ooh, maybe you should try that!
I distilled a mead I had made and did not like the end taste off. It turned out to be 120 proof and drank smooth after it sat for a few months in my freezer. Was a fun experience and good way to use the alcohol that would have otherwise been tossed out.
Hey J, here's a suggestion. Take the unwooded and blend it with a bourbon style that have been wooded on cherry. I did it with a 50/50 mix @ 44%. It is so good that I don't want to share it.
Man, I've been watching you for years, and this makes me want to take the plunge. Now to go back through your vids and look for "So...you want to buy a still..." ;) o7
I've been making Cyser for a minute and have wanted to make the jump into shining it. This is exactly the video I wanted to see. The final result makes me think I'll want to make a fortified version of it, instead of a pure spirit. Make it twice, batch age one and age the spirit on wood and eventually blend it. Thanks man 🤜🤛
I would love to see a follow-up to this. I think changing the honey that you use (or maybe even how you treat it) would get you the kind of flavour that you're looking for. You could try adding herbs and/or spices to either the fermentation or the still. You could try blossom honeys (blueberry blossom, ahrange blossom, etc.). They tend to have this wonderful softness that you don't get with other honeys. Buckwheat honey is extremely dark and robust, almost like molasses (not sure if you'd be able to get it in New Zealand though). You could also try caramelizing the honey before fermenting it. This gives a lot of toasted, coffee, toffee flavours. Whatever you decided to do, I would recommend that you avoid clover honey. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but it doesn't have much flavour other than "honey".
This REALLY made me wonder what your exposure to eau de vie / proper schnapps is. The week we spent on holiday in the Black Forest drinking all different kinds of schnapps was incredible and the honeyshine and aged honey made me think about nothing so much as that!
Spot on for those tasting notes with my experience in making mead brandy, I would love to see a distilled botchet (mead from browned/carmaelized honey) as the mead itself leans towards a rum/porter direction. Maybe good for an experiment with a small batch?
You mentioned peaty single malt and honey. I was searching for the spices to go with that combination almost forty years ago to clone Drambuie. Nutmeg/mace got me close but not dead on. Don’t drink sugary stuff much anymore, but I would love to know the secret! Thanks muck, Jesse
Dude you're awesome! I've "Shared" all of your mead/honey videos with a friend of mine who has his own bee hives over here in Estonia. Hopefully we'll be able to share something with you by way of experiments, thanks again & keep up the great work! 👍🙂🌿🇺🇲🇪🇪☀️📿✝️
As a lover of honey and mead I would love for you to check out chestnut honey and the mead made from that. A good chestnut honey is probably the most complex a honey can taste with very little seetness and an insane nuttiness. It's hard to describe. Most chestnut meads you will see don't use a 100% chestnut honey (and I'm not sure it would even taste good if they did). The issue is that you can take the problem with the cost of honey and multiply it by 10 to get good chestnut honey. The stuff is expensive. But if you want to use it as something to add to other alcohol you should see if you can get your hands on some.
First time viewer and enjoyed watching this since I have wanted to try it. One type of mead to try is called acerglyn, honey and maple syrup combined. That might be interesting.
I have made a few meads and it’s the same there but you get a weird femented honey on the back end so to counter that I add something that might be in the mead a note like vanilla or lime. Anyway. Honey has a lot of cool flavors but your right it’s high. I bet the honey shine would be good in a cocktail. Keep it up brother.
Sweet and spicy popped straight into my head. Put a small chilly in mansion 2 jars and top them up with straight honey shine and the other with oaked honey shine
Have you ever used, or even seen a “trap-still”? I recently learned about them, about some family members way back using them. And it’s awesome, super easy and compact
The aged stuff sounds delicious. I know that Josh from Moonshiners uses Fireweed Honey in his cherry bounce recipe. I used Pennsylvania wildflower honey in my version of Cherry Bounce with outstanding results
I distilled 5 liters of blackberry and black cherry mead (no water, just fruit and raspberry blossom honey, 14% alcohol)since it had some nasty flavor in it. Put the ~1 liter of spirit at 53% on french oak cubes from used cognac barrels. The intensity and complexity just blows me away, a treat for a whisky lover. Now I am a bit sad my accident of a mead was only 5 liters...
I recently made a 3/4 malted barley 1/4 honey mash, distilled once, hearts came out at 42%, put in heavy charred American oak. Turned out nice but did cause a lot of corrosion in my still.
I have experimented using honey quite a bit and the best results/ the best bang for your buck that I have personally gotten is to use honey in a thumper when distilling. Just be mindful that honey is thick and will build more pressure in your still than your thmper typically would
There is a BC Distillery named Wayward Distillery that makes amazing mead distillates. Please check them out as they make my favourite alcohol. Both their Gin, and the Krupnik.
Oh... That's the missing ingredient. I've been toying around with the idea of a Kvass inspired "Poor Man's Rye whiskey" (obviously, I'd have to mess with the recipe a good bit to boost the sugar content, since traditional kvass is extremely low abv.) Honey is one of the common sweeteners used when making Kvass, so that might be at least part of what I use to bump up the sugar content to something whiskey grade. (as I spitball the recipe in real time) Base it around pumpernickel rye swirl bread, so that you get some variation. Bulk it up with some wheat bread and possibly even some cornmeal to mimic a "grain bill" and then fill out the remaining sugars needed to get to an ideal SG with honey.
I had an attempt at distilling leatherwood honey mead. An insane amount of the aroma (leatherwood is the most aromatic honey I've ever encountered), but had a lot of the alcohol heat. It calmed down after some time on un-toasted white oak chips, though.
I got a whole lot of cappings from a friend, made about 80l of Joes ancient mead, bottled half and will distill the other half into a spirit to do something with. if you can make beekeeper friends to get their cappings that would be the most economical way to do it.
Just wanted to say been a fan for a while. I've been making my own mead for couple of years now always wondered how it would turn out if it was distilled but still bit illegal here in the UK. ps Loved sharing the facts about the navy rum with my boy who's currently obsessed with pirates
I think the wood brought some caramel / vanilla flavors that enhance the perceived sweeteness. I made a dry mead at 15% ABV, with vanilla + a bit of oak. The whole thing tasted sweet. The hydrometer read 1.000.
Hi I have made this several times now originally with free honey but I have bought honey two to make it, it's very popular here and as a result I have to remake. I run it and store on white oak at 50 % then proof down after a month or two to 40 but I add about 10 ml of honey, it's very good and I must admit I don't like mead as such. Doug
You should try it with Australian native bee honey. Its more intense, which is why its called "sugarbag" honey and changes with where it gets its nectar.
Also try doing one with boucheted honey, surely I'm spelling that wrong. (Toasted caramelized honey basically ) Anyways I think it will make a huge difference! .... please fix missing board on the set bench. Please
I would love to see you making some form of Liqueur put of the Unaged Honeyshine. Like I think it would be interesting to have a blueberry Liqueur made out of the Unaged clear honeyshine.
I think it would it be interesting to hybridize it with rum wash and/or styles (mead backset/muck) to bring the floral honey flavors with tropical rum flavors.
So in my experience those darker heavy sweet notes, caramel and molasses, in honey come out from lots of time in the hive. I've worked with my father a bit on his hives in the past and it's always the first few frames that got filled have the darker honey bordering on burnt amber in shade. The reason it gets this way is that it's had more and more moister removed iirc, and if you are getting that off the aged honey distillate it's making me really jealous because I live in the US
Cool video agreed honey is cost limiting for sure. I like to make mead and even that hurts my scotish pocketbook sometimes. Always been interested in what would happen to it if you could run it through the still though. Wonder if you could do something like a braggot and add some honey to a mash maybe to help kick up the O.G.? See what that does for the final product.
Previously you did a peach brandy but that was with yellow peaches, in my opinion white peaches would have been better as they have a higher sugar content which would have solved that not wanting to add sugar to it problem, also they tend to separate from the stone easier. So maybe another attempt would be cool to see and also comparing their flavors maybe
I'd greatly appreciate your input on a 7-5-1 ratio(honey, green fruit, red fruit) of Strawberry-Kiwi, (green)Grape-Raspberry, or non listed tart green fruit-red fruit "MeadyShine" aged in either a dark toast hickory/apple(60-40 ratio), or light char maple/oak(50-50 ratio). I'm native to the Chihuahua dessert in Texas, lived in AZ, NM, NY, and the plains-gulf in texas, so I've experienced many "quazi-jalisco" style taste profiles, and I think the fermented flavors(minus the heat) could translate really well into the spirit category, hypothetically. Keep chasing the craft good sir🍻 P. S. Does anyone know if Mr Duncan is O.K.? He's a wonderful fundamentalist that inspired me to begin my "theoretical hobby" chapter in life; ie scientific methodology...
Single variety honey is where it's at with honey. The flavour is far greater and more defined and individual. For a whiskey, Heather Honey is gonna be spectacular :)
i wonder what apple wood would do to it instead of oak. but as far as making honeyshine, it's not really that expansive. you can got to walmart (here in the US) and pick up a 5 lb jug of clover honey for 13 bucks a piece, and depending on how you make it you only need two jugs to make a decent batch of mead to make the honeyshine. so all in all you would end up spending 26 to 28 bucks to make it just for the honey.
The second product I ever made was a "honey" based distillation, but instead of using commercial grade honey, I used the wash that was left over after processing combs from my own hives for honey and wax. There was still a lot of honey and nectar left in them. Adding the comb to boiling water melts the wax and it separates to the surface and then straining the remaining fluid of all other detritus. I fermented that into a "dirty mead" then distilled it. I was impressed how much the result tasted like the way a hive smells, and totally had that deep honey characteristic you spoke of. Not a great drink though, the flavours were too strong and dominated even when mixing just little bits into other product. However, 14-15 months of age on American oak has turned it into something very drinkable and totally unique and enjoyable.
Totally recommend playing with honey if available.
Great thinking. The ability to use what would be normally be wasted is great. I am venturing down the same track but I have a shit load of Manuka honey retention samples and the like. This stuff is really expensive top grade honey. I have made spiced meade and distilled that.
I've been making mead for years. I actually go into distilling BECAUSE of mead. What happened was "life getting in the way" of maintaining some carboys I was using to age traditional meads. A combination of me neglecting to watch the fluid levels in the airlocks and a power failure (I live in the tropics) resulted in over 15 gallons of mead getting oxidized to hell. With the price of honey these days, throwing away the mead wasn't an option. So I decided to distill it. The most surprising thing was how much of the honey aroma was left over vs how little of the honey taste. Also, at 14-18% I had A LOT of distillate at the end. Now I'm distilling almost as much as I am making mead. But I am experimenting with flavoring a sugar wash with honey or dry mead.
I’m in the same boat
@@Andre2199CE Are you on gotmead?
One of my favorite things I tried was a brandy aged with walnut shells. I think aging this with walnut shell would be nice as well. Honey and nuts go really well together.
That actually sound like a very awesome and perfect idea! And so much, that I'm considering trying out mead distillation just to try to get that blend of flavors! I used to love honey covered peanuts and OMG now I have to figure this out!
Oh man ! You got my mind going into overdrive. Never thought of aging using nut shells. Think I will be test aging neutral spirit (vodka/everclear) with different nut shells to see what flavors I will be working with.
I did some hickory smoked corn and barley for a whiskey. I had a bunch of hickory nuts as well, and threw them in the smoker as well to help layer the hickory flavor and char them up a bit. I’ve got some of the pieces in with the spirit as it ages now. Love this idea so much. We are black walnut fools around here!
Very inspirational and well described work. Thanks
I'm a Newbie Beekeper (2 or 3 years) and i have noticed that my bees make a dark honey called "honeydew", or "forest honey" from the oak trees (and probably other trees as well), at certain times of year, It tastes really woody probably has more of the tanins that you would expect from a cask aged spirit ? Maybe worth investigating as an additive to the Raw vodka like spirit ? Hmmm...
Hi Jesse,
I keep bees and have been making mead for many years.
I started to distill some of it a couple of years ago.
I have tried the whole 'ageing in glass with oak' thing, but would highly recommend storing it in a barrel if possible.
The difference is incredible
Would you describe the difference? I'm curious.
@@user-dm1tv6nl2e My experience with trying to "Age" in glass is that I can get the colour and the oakiness, but I've never achieved the smoothness that I can get from a barrel.
I've always put this down to the fact that the liquid and the oak both need to breathe and to quote the scotch whisky distillers "Once you put the spirit into glass it stops ageing".
It might be that my technique is lacking but I end up with an astringent taste at the back of the throat which I don't get with a barrel.
Hope this helps
@@theironduke9214 It does. I've had a couple of thoughts on that:
1. Does any part of wood need to be exposed to both air and the liquid to achieve breathing?
2. When aging in glass (even if on chips or otherwise) my assumption is that the jar is sitting in someone's basement. If so, the liquid is unlikely to see extreme temperature swings. I associate the transportation of liquid into and out of the wood to these swings.
So maybe sticking that jar in a shed or barn (or heck, an attic) might add some aging effects? If you made a really stinking well fit wood lid to the jar, maybe you could get both effects?
You are absolutely right! I have a 2 year old peated single malt with 10% honey sugars and it is HEAVANLY!
In Portugal they produce a clear fruit spirit called Medronho, into which they can add all sorts of flavour additions. Honey Medronho is very sweet with the added honey and good for shots. Best one I've tried had fresh black cherries. Tasty stuff!
I really like your view on stuff, whatever you do, you do it really good. Youre awesone
Remember when you toasted the corn??? Add honey to the mash! YUMMM !!
The peated whiskey with a honey finish sounds amazing!
Now a friend used to make what she called her Earl Grey tea Mead. The tea added a nice tannic element with the bergamot hint to the mead. This would be an interesting distilled spirit.
The guys over at the MB Tribe played with a mead barrel finished whiskey that I think sounds similar, but getting your hands on mead barrels is almost impossible. But can be a fun idea to play with on a small scale at home! Make your own mead, age in a small barrel and then use that barrel to agree your peated whiskey in...
Tea meads are great. I made a lapsang souchong bochet mead last year. Aged on oak for a few months and after only that long it was so good I think only two bottles made it to a year 😂
Thanks for creating these videos! I recently brewed Dogfish Head’s T’ej recipe (a play on an Ethiopian honey wine/beer using gesho as the bittering agent) and distilled most of the batch. I aged one jar of the distillate with rum seasoned toasted Am oak and the other jar with T’ej seasoned toasted French oak and they both tasted pretty great! The former has much brighter, honey, floral, vanilla notes while the latter has very rich, dark fruit, tootsie rolls, star anise notes. It was a really successful experiment!
I dunno why but the whole video I was thinking, “Crouching Jesse Hidden Whiskey”. Not sure why but in my mind you ARE the whiskey Ninja, Jesse!
I have been brewing mead for 10 years, don't have a still. But this is amazing and i would love to try it. Mead usually gets aged a good long while. Do you think that ageing the mead for 3 years before running it through the still would make a difference cos it makes a huge difference to the harshness of mead treated like wine.
I am sure it would make a difference, but I think it would be small. Save that 3 year old for drinking.
I made a methgelin for a couple of buddies of mine who got married back in 2008. It was rocket fuel. I kept testing it every few months starting out, and it seemed like it just needed more age on it. After 11 years I finally marked it up as a loss. A good friend of mine wanted to run it through a still. That was where the magic happened! It came out like a gin, with an undercurrent of sweetness from the honey at about 75% abv . We proofed it down to 100 proof with honey syrup. Fortunately both buddies were still married to their wives😅. I got to give them their anniversary "meads", only it was 11 years later. They loved it. I do not recommend doing it, even though it was a neat learning experience.
It's not so bad distilled after a few weeks I may have to try it aged for a while. I've been mead making for three or so years now and distilling since Christmas on a small pot still and it's just as addictive as mead making
It makes zero sense to age any ferment before distilling. You are heating everything up and thereby undoing any benefits of "age"
Distilled honey is amazing. I have it with me
Dude, I'm in the US and can't legally distill yet until the law changes, but I enjoy your passion for teaching and your wisdom to know that you don't know everything and likely never will. As someone who has learned from and worked for both a master carpenter and an excellent carpenter, I can say that you have all the hallmarks of a true master craftsman. By that I don't mean that you are simply very good at what you do. I mean that you are not only good at what you do, but you actively seek to teach others and continue to learn as well. Master craftsman will tell you that they don't know everything, will help you learn with patience and dedication, and will learn with you and ensure that you are personalizing your craft. They are both teachers and students at the same time. From my own experiences, the excellent carpenter (who is inarguably better than the master) didn't bother to teach and merely wanted results and to show off his own skills and mostly wanted someone to do the grunt work for him. The master carpenter taught, and while he wanted results, he also wanted me to learn how to consistently get excellent results and grow to become better than him. And he's frankly amazing at what he does, the second best I've ever seen, and I always enjoy working with him when we've both got time.
If you live in one of the right states you'll never get in trouble for home distilling for your own personal use, despite the fact that it remains federally illegal. It's kind of like cannabis in that sense.
@@tissuepaper9962 Oh 100% agreed, but even living in those states you can't exactly advertise that you distill at home or you can face federal charges. It's basically a "don't be an obnoxious butthole" kind of thing. And something I saw bite a guy I used to work with in the ass. He posted about it on Facebook, where he happened to be "friends" with an fbi agent, said fbi agent contacted the atf... And now that guy is sitting in a jail cell for a few years.
@@michellewilt4479 some friend... Just another in a long list of reasons to do away with the BATF.
@@tissuepaper9962 yeah really. I mean, technically said "friend" was just doing their job, but that's just shitty. Dude was making booze, not selling guns to cartels or burning women and children alive or shooting dogs... Like a certain government funded terrorist organization that masquerades as a law enforcement agency does...
@@tissuepaper9962 oh and while posing for pictures over the bodies of said children, like a certain potential head of said terrorist organization did...
I've been making and loving honeyshine for years. My favorite is caramelizing the honey first and aging in Apple wood. It is an entirely different flavor.
Jessy, I have come to realize that this is my favorite channel on youtube. I have been reading up in the forums to prepare to buy/build a modular still, and you have been feeding me Ideas for weeks now. I was wondering if you have ever done anything with Orange Juice? I've been searching, and found many things on Orange Wine but not distilled orange wine.
Would love to see a video on that. Thanks again for all the inspiration and all that you have taught me.
Thank you so much for this. I'll be distilling a blueberry melomel next month and this info was much needed
Sweet video!
What I would recommend would be to make mead again with cooked honey till its caramelized. Yes it’ll be on the pricy side but it would change up the flavor profile yet again. After that, adding vanilla bean to it while its aging would be intense!
I might have tracked down a liq fairy, I am courting her and might be beginning my journey into the craft. A heavy spiced mead was one of my first ideas to give her.
"liq fairy" sounds like a euphemism lmao.
@@tissuepaper9962 if you know, you know. If dont know, it sounds like a euphemism for something else.
@@jacobthompson1682 You come off like a forum kid who believes "SWIM" and a heavy sprinkling of euphemisms are a Protection From Law Enforcement spell. It's laughable. BATF shouldn't give a solid shit about your still unless you're selling your product. The locals may be a bit peeved when you burn down your domicile, though, so please try to not do that...
@@popefacto5945 damn man, do you need a hug?
Im so glad that I found your channel. Once again mate. Thank you. 😊
Yes mixing honey with spirit works, here in Serbia we make Honeyed Plum Rakija for Christmas Eve, or any other tipe of rakija
Lavender honey, expensive as heck but like manuka honey loads of flavor.
Fennel honey too! Delicious!
My liquor fairy used some rum dunder and added honey, fermented and distilled. Yum. Give it a try!
This is one of my favorites to make. I get my honey from a friend who has a bee farm. I too am a whiskey fan. The build I use is 75% honey and 25% DME. I also toss in some quick oats for mouth feel. I am trying to make a single malt as well. Mouth feel is excellent. The sprit loves the wood! A beautiful sprit indeed. I oven roasted my white oak rather than burning it. Cheers mate!
so i hobby make mead and usually back sweeten with macerated fruits. I assume you could use the honeyshine to produce liquors instead of the vodka/TPP you have in previous videos which will require less sugar to sweeten and if the fruits are paired right, could work well with the smoke from the oak you mentioned.
Also the rough edges in mead settle out with time during a racking phase. This might happen with the honeyshine but also could just be carried through from the production. I'm still learning but just wanted to offer up what i have learnt.
cheers for the great content
Very encouraging thank you I’ll keep on watching
Nice one jessie when ya gonna do an update on the 100k cask?
Have you ever heard of „Bärenfang“ literally „bear catch“. An old prussian liqueur. Made and sold usually by beekeepers in Germany. It’s usually just Vodka or Korn mixed with lots of honey. I would imagine it works better with what you got.
It's called barenjager in the US, maybe in NZ too. Tasty stuff.
It's been wonderful to see how this experiment has gone for you!
I'm far from an expert in the honey itself (or in meadmaking, I'm still a hobbyist), but the differences in honey sources is staggering. Some result in different ratios of fructose and glucose, with Tupelo honey being so high in fructose it doesn't crystalize. A lot of the flavor components are chemicals in the source nectar that just never get refined out in the honey making process that the bees do. There's also the ratio of the sources themselves and if flowers are the sole source of sugars the bees get to make honey from.
If/when you come back to the states, try securing a 5 gallon pail of Dutch gold's bakers honey (60 lbs) $100, before shipping. I discovered you from your appearance on Whiskey Tribe, when they distilled an oxidized mead, so I'm not currently on your Patreon. But, I'm very interested in seeing more of this from you and wouldn't mind contributing to this effort. Cheers
Hey Jesse,
I have been doing meadandy for many years now and my favourite is adding some botanicals to a gin head when running my spirit run and that is a nice addition to a whiskey at around 80ml per finished ltr of spirit.
Check out Bochets, caramelize part of the honey before fermenting. Maybe go for some sort of braggot (mix of mead and beer) for the base to get even closer to whisky without losing those honey flavors.
I have one of those little airstills, I like experementing with different meads too and when one doesn't work out I just throw it in the still to see if that can save it :D
Honey is such amazing stuff when used in making alcoholic beverages. I make a honey and cinnamon vapor infused gin using a thumper (base gin recipe is London dry with 9 botanicals) and man it is very tasty, the cinnamon and honey seems to form a delicate marriage on the nose that explodes with dark grungy notes on the pallet while preserving the gin flavor. I call it SynerG. Home distilling rocks and thank you Jesse for everything you do for the craft! Greetings from legal home distilling South Africa.
W O W !!!!!
This REALLY has me excited about my project. I have been homebrewing Meads for the last 1.5 years. The Dungeons & Dragons group I'm with wondered about taking Mead to this level as the DungeonMaster has a home Still. Our plan is to brew a 6-gallon batch of Acerglyn (half Honey - half Maple Syrup) Distill 4 gallons, and bottle the last 2 gallons as an accompanying drink to the distilled product. It is inspired by one of the characters in our party: a Drunken Master Monk named Lush Doubleshot. Hence the Distilled Mead / Straight Mead " Lush's Double "
Your breakdown of your process has truly inspired me that this really CAN work! I have some Oaking Sticks that I may use in the distillate to help elevate that honeyness...
The experimental recipe I used to arrive at the final batch:
*** 12 oz. Wildflower Honey
*** 12 oz. Maple Syrup
*** 1/2 tsp. Loose Leaf Orange Cream Tea
*** 1/2 tsp. Tomato Paste
*** 1/2 packet Lalvin EC-1118 Yeast
*** Water to 1/2 Gallon.
OG 1.110 fermented out to 1.004
Racked and backsweetened with 4 oz. each Honey and Maple syrup. After a month the final gravity was stable at 1.030 The final Acerglyn is incredibly clear and a dark amber hue. I look forward to seeing if I can duplicate this in the 6 gallon bucket, which I started a week ago.
Thank You for this series of videos paralleling my curiosity.
This sounds awesome. I know tomato paste for nutrients is common for distillation, but in the raw product, we’re there any weird flavors from it?
@@kjdevault I ran two Acerglyns side by side... 1 with Tomato Paste, 1 without. They both fermented dry equally. The without had a very astringent taste, heavy alcohol. The WITH was smooth and delicious, with equal taste of Honey and Maple Syrup... no tomato aftertaste or by-product! Shocking and Exciting!
I made a buckwheat honey mead, that I aged on oak for 3 years. buckwheat honey has a very dark almost molasses like flavor. would be great in a peated whiskey or a rum.
"These kinds of videos are for the core members of the channel, those that watch regularly."
Me: ... This is, like, the third video I've seen...
Generally, but not always, Spring Honeys are lighter coloured and lighter flavoured, while Fall Honeys are darker coloured and heavier flavoured, with Summer Honeys being somewhere in the middle. Each area will have a "Flow" time (seasonal) when bees make the most honey from the flowers in the area. Modern agriculture has allowed varietal honeys from crops/orchards to be collected, which can be excellent (orange or blueberry honey), it has lead to a generic, uniform, expected taste for (Grocery Store) honey (in North America this would be Canola/Rapeseed or Clover as those are the 2 most common flowering crops). Historic honeys tended to be "whatever the bee could find," similar honeys can be found on the market today labelled as "Wild Flower" though they tend to not deviate greatly from what people expect honey to taste like. This means certain crop honeys that have unique, bold and strong flavours (Buckwheat) tend not to sell well to the general public, making them less desired, potentially cheaper, though rarer because the crop is not grown as often.
i will using caramel in my thumper, i love the sweet after-taste. smoked applewood is another test.
A friend of mine made an infusion with honey, mead, and Everclear, then used two pieces of American oak and one piece of medium toast French oak. He said it was almost creamy, and had a rich mouthfeel.
Speaking of melding flavours & using honey. I'd love to see your take on making something similar to Dubliner which if you're not familiar with it is a whiskey liqueur infused with honeycomb & caramel which is irresistibly moreish 😋
Yeah definitely agree unless you're raising your own Bee's or know someone that does and produce there own honey this would be very expensive. Just to make regular mead it takes about 3 lb or 1.35 kg of honey per gallon or 3.8 liters and by the time you distill say a five gallon batch you'll only end of with-2-3 gallons of spirits. Depending on the type of flowers or plants the bees have been pollinating can make a big difference what the honey can taste and color like buckwheat honey is very dark and has a molasses taste to it. Orange blossom honey more circusy golden. So if you were to make a distill mead spirit it would be really expensive specialty liquor. Would be interesting how a distilled mean version of a Brumbuie would taste like just good luck getting enough heather honey, figuring out what herbs and spices to use.
Amazing results! So with rum, a lot of the “flavor” comes from the dunder. Could you create a honey dunder for mead to boost complexity? Has me thinking that when I make a batch of mead I should let some dunder get funky for a subsequent batch. Idk.
I think that's actually a great idea. I really want to try this now. I made some distilled mead twice already and i like it but it sure could use some more flavor. A dunder could be the solution i was looking for so thanks a lot for that !
@@laurent2595 awesome!!! I hope it turns out as great as I think it will!
I was thinking the same thing. Honey with the blackstrap and maybe some honey added to the dunder. Hopefully between the two there will be that nice honey/floral flavor.
In the Caribbean, honey has been used a lot for deserts etc because of the warm envroment. It could have been used in your rum as a kicker. Maybe try the rum with a little of this mixed in?
@@stevegee218 Sounds delightful. Looks like I’ll be experimenting a lot this fall!
Cheers Jessie
Have you ever considered using charred pecans? I could send you some from Oklahoma to do with your whiskey I think it would really compliment the honey shine
I made a mead with agave nectar and grenadine syrup, it tasted incredible. I think it might be interesting to distill it
Did a 100% Simpsons heavy peated malt wash. Added 5lb honey, 5lb sorghum, & 1 quart blackstrap to raise the s.g. used a rum yeast. Had a 9% abv. Double Alembic run. Proofed to 112 & added one 4 inch by 1/4"x1/4" single use bourbon wood per gallon. In a lagering frig at 55F August of 2012. Epic result. Have a few quarts filled with Marula fruit soaking in some now. Might just Airstill some of that for grins. However, the honey & sorghum were too expensive to use again d/t the end point contribution effects.
I'm a hobby mead maker and this project has been very interesting to me since I've been curious about distilled mead for a while. If I ever start my professional meadery, I would definitly want to make a distilled mead and sell it as a more exclusive product. Maybe blend normal distilled and freeze distilled.
Ooh, maybe you should try that!
I distilled a mead I had made and did not like the end taste off. It turned out to be 120 proof and drank smooth after it sat for a few months in my freezer. Was a fun experience and good way to use the alcohol that would have otherwise been tossed out.
Hey J, here's a suggestion. Take the unwooded and blend it with a bourbon style that have been wooded on cherry. I did it with a 50/50 mix @ 44%. It is so good that I don't want to share it.
Man, I've been watching you for years, and this makes me want to take the plunge. Now to go back through your vids and look for "So...you want to buy a still..." ;)
o7
I've been making Cyser for a minute and have wanted to make the jump into shining it. This is exactly the video I wanted to see.
The final result makes me think I'll want to make a fortified version of it, instead of a pure spirit. Make it twice, batch age one and age the spirit on wood and eventually blend it.
Thanks man 🤜🤛
I would love to see a follow-up to this. I think changing the honey that you use (or maybe even how you treat it) would get you the kind of flavour that you're looking for. You could try adding herbs and/or spices to either the fermentation or the still. You could try blossom honeys (blueberry blossom, ahrange blossom, etc.). They tend to have this wonderful softness that you don't get with other honeys. Buckwheat honey is extremely dark and robust, almost like molasses (not sure if you'd be able to get it in New Zealand though). You could also try caramelizing the honey before fermenting it. This gives a lot of toasted, coffee, toffee flavours. Whatever you decided to do, I would recommend that you avoid clover honey. Nothing inherently wrong with it, but it doesn't have much flavour other than "honey".
Dude, I made a bochet mead and distilled it. Saved some white dog and aged the rest on French oak. It’s phenomenal.
This REALLY made me wonder what your exposure to eau de vie / proper schnapps is.
The week we spent on holiday in the Black Forest drinking all different kinds of schnapps was incredible and the honeyshine and aged honey made me think about nothing so much as that!
Spot on for those tasting notes with my experience in making mead brandy, I would love to see a distilled botchet (mead from browned/carmaelized honey) as the mead itself leans towards a rum/porter direction. Maybe good for an experiment with a small batch?
Love the attitude. Some people are so heavenly minded, they are no earthly good.. It's all about the journey .
You mentioned peaty single malt and honey. I was searching for the spices to go with that combination almost forty years ago to clone Drambuie. Nutmeg/mace got me close but not dead on. Don’t drink sugary stuff much anymore, but I would love to know the secret!
Thanks muck, Jesse
I'd love to see you do a honey-shine apple jack! I'm thinking about trying to do that myself.
Dude you're awesome! I've "Shared" all of your mead/honey videos with a friend of mine who has his own bee hives over here in Estonia. Hopefully we'll be able to share something with you by way of experiments, thanks again & keep up the great work! 👍🙂🌿🇺🇲🇪🇪☀️📿✝️
Would love to see you try this with buckwheat honey. Super dark flavors of molasses. Would pair well with some medium plus toast oak!
As a lover of honey and mead I would love for you to check out chestnut honey and the mead made from that. A good chestnut honey is probably the most complex a honey can taste with very little seetness and an insane nuttiness. It's hard to describe.
Most chestnut meads you will see don't use a 100% chestnut honey (and I'm not sure it would even taste good if they did). The issue is that you can take the problem with the cost of honey and multiply it by 10 to get good chestnut honey. The stuff is expensive.
But if you want to use it as something to add to other alcohol you should see if you can get your hands on some.
I'm trying English Oak, damsen wood and hawthorn wood in my 'aging'. Looking forward to seeing what they add etc
First time viewer and enjoyed watching this since I have wanted to try it. One type of mead to try is called acerglyn, honey and maple syrup combined. That might be interesting.
I’m going to try lemonade. I’ve made wine using country time lemonade before and it’s come out awesome. Now I want to try and distill that wine.
I have made a few meads and it’s the same there but you get a weird femented honey on the back end so to counter that I add something that might be in the mead a note like vanilla or lime. Anyway. Honey has a lot of cool flavors but your right it’s high. I bet the honey shine would be good in a cocktail. Keep it up brother.
Just a thought, adding honey in with the fruit when making a brandy. Been wanting to try it for awhile.
Make it again but with half the sugar coming from a grain and half from the honey - oats might work well.
Sweet and spicy popped straight into my head. Put a small chilly in mansion 2 jars and top them up with straight honey shine and the other with oaked honey shine
Have you ever used, or even seen a “trap-still”? I recently learned about them, about some family members way back using them. And it’s awesome, super easy and compact
I like the idea of using a little but not overly struck on honey on its own. I have got a jar though
Skill and Knowledge hunters. Nice! Describes Chasing the Craft pretty well. :)
Thanks Jesse!
The aged stuff sounds delicious. I know that Josh from Moonshiners uses Fireweed Honey in his cherry bounce recipe. I used Pennsylvania wildflower honey in my version of Cherry Bounce with outstanding results
I distilled 5 liters of blackberry and black cherry mead (no water, just fruit and raspberry blossom honey, 14% alcohol)since it had some nasty flavor in it. Put the ~1 liter of spirit at 53% on french oak cubes from used cognac barrels. The intensity and complexity just blows me away, a treat for a whisky lover. Now I am a bit sad my accident of a mead was only 5 liters...
I recently made a 3/4 malted barley 1/4 honey mash, distilled once, hearts came out at 42%, put in heavy charred American oak.
Turned out nice but did cause a lot of corrosion in my still.
I have experimented using honey quite a bit and the best results/ the best bang for your buck that I have personally gotten is to use honey in a thumper when distilling. Just be mindful that honey is thick and will build more pressure in your still than your thmper typically would
There is a BC Distillery named Wayward Distillery that makes amazing mead distillates. Please check them out as they make my favourite alcohol. Both their Gin, and the Krupnik.
Oh... That's the missing ingredient. I've been toying around with the idea of a Kvass inspired "Poor Man's Rye whiskey" (obviously, I'd have to mess with the recipe a good bit to boost the sugar content, since traditional kvass is extremely low abv.) Honey is one of the common sweeteners used when making Kvass, so that might be at least part of what I use to bump up the sugar content to something whiskey grade. (as I spitball the recipe in real time) Base it around pumpernickel rye swirl bread, so that you get some variation. Bulk it up with some wheat bread and possibly even some cornmeal to mimic a "grain bill" and then fill out the remaining sugars needed to get to an ideal SG with honey.
Used to be a white dog but wood gives it a lot more character in my opinion..thanks for your vids. ❤🇺🇸
I had an attempt at distilling leatherwood honey mead. An insane amount of the aroma (leatherwood is the most aromatic honey I've ever encountered), but had a lot of the alcohol heat. It calmed down after some time on un-toasted white oak chips, though.
I got a whole lot of cappings from a friend, made about 80l of Joes ancient mead, bottled half and will distill the other half into a spirit to do something with. if you can make beekeeper friends to get their cappings that would be the most economical way to do it.
Just wanted to say been a fan for a while. I've been making my own mead for couple of years now always wondered how it would turn out if it was distilled but still bit illegal here in the UK. ps Loved sharing the facts about the navy rum with my boy who's currently obsessed with pirates
Go for it!!!! Do you think any of this would exist if we all did as we were told?
I think the wood brought some caramel / vanilla flavors that enhance the perceived sweeteness.
I made a dry mead at 15% ABV, with vanilla + a bit of oak. The whole thing tasted sweet. The hydrometer read 1.000.
Hi I have made this several times now originally with free honey but I have bought honey two to make it, it's very popular here and as a result I have to remake. I run it and store on white oak at 50 % then proof down after a month or two to 40 but I add about 10 ml of honey, it's very good and I must admit I don't like mead as such. Doug
You should try it with Australian native bee honey. Its more intense, which is why its called "sugarbag" honey and changes with where it gets its nectar.
Also try doing one with boucheted honey, surely I'm spelling that wrong. (Toasted caramelized honey basically ) Anyways I think it will make a huge difference! .... please fix missing board on the set bench. Please
Lavender definitely add some lavender and always a nice wood to age on and compare and give complexity.
I’m gonna do this and age on a fruit wood
Orange Blossom Honey Shine to use with a gin basket could be amazing... maybe a bit of lilac in the basket
I would love to see you making some form of Liqueur put of the Unaged Honeyshine. Like I think it would be interesting to have a blueberry Liqueur made out of the Unaged clear honeyshine.
I think it would it be interesting to hybridize it with rum wash and/or styles (mead backset/muck) to bring the floral honey flavors with tropical rum flavors.
Please please can you do a video on flavoring shine with honey sounds amazing 👍👍👍👍
Hmmmmm, oats and honey. So maybe a oats and rye whiskey to off set the florals with some spicy grassy flavoured whiskey.
So in my experience those darker heavy sweet notes, caramel and molasses, in honey come out from lots of time in the hive. I've worked with my father a bit on his hives in the past and it's always the first few frames that got filled have the darker honey bordering on burnt amber in shade. The reason it gets this way is that it's had more and more moister removed iirc, and if you are getting that off the aged honey distillate it's making me really jealous because I live in the US
Cool video agreed honey is cost limiting for sure. I like to make mead and even that hurts my scotish pocketbook sometimes. Always been interested in what would happen to it if you could run it through the still though. Wonder if you could do something like a braggot and add some honey to a mash maybe to help kick up the O.G.? See what that does for the final product.
Maybe to a bourbon mash or something like?
Made from a sugar.... this is a Rum :) Add a little of the original honey back into the oaked version and maybe try a lightly spiced version.
Previously you did a peach brandy but that was with yellow peaches, in my opinion white peaches would have been better as they have a higher sugar content which would have solved that not wanting to add sugar to it problem, also they tend to separate from the stone easier. So maybe another attempt would be cool to see and also comparing their flavors maybe
I'd greatly appreciate your input on a 7-5-1 ratio(honey, green fruit, red fruit) of Strawberry-Kiwi, (green)Grape-Raspberry, or non listed tart green fruit-red fruit "MeadyShine" aged in either a dark toast hickory/apple(60-40 ratio), or light char maple/oak(50-50 ratio). I'm native to the Chihuahua dessert in Texas, lived in AZ, NM, NY, and the plains-gulf in texas, so I've experienced many "quazi-jalisco" style taste profiles, and I think the fermented flavors(minus the heat) could translate really well into the spirit category, hypothetically. Keep chasing the craft good sir🍻
P. S. Does anyone know if Mr Duncan is O.K.? He's a wonderful fundamentalist that inspired me to begin my "theoretical hobby" chapter in life; ie scientific methodology...
Single variety honey is where it's at with honey. The flavour is far greater and more defined and individual.
For a whiskey, Heather Honey is gonna be spectacular :)
I'd probably suggest sticking plants like roses and other flowers or preserving fruit in that stuff.
i wonder what apple wood would do to it instead of oak.
but as far as making honeyshine, it's not really that expansive. you can got to walmart (here in the US) and pick up a 5 lb jug of clover honey for 13 bucks a piece, and depending on how you make it you only need two jugs to make a decent batch of mead to make the honeyshine. so all in all you would end up spending 26 to 28 bucks to make it just for the honey.