To make the best mead ...

Picking up on a discussion from the tea room:

Ploshkin wrote:Chilli Head, people I know who make mead never use their 'best' honey.  I'm afraid I don't know anything about mead making.

Hmm.  I set out mead making out of curiosity, with bought honey.  I then read a small book about it.  The author was pretty snooty about beekeepers' meadmaking, saying that the results were often rough because they all to often view it as a way of using up their waste, rather than the main product.  "To make the best mead, you must use your best honey",  he said.  And I believe it is right.  I've used bought honey, and then honey from my BIL when he had a bumper year.  Both gave excellent mead (if I say so myself).

I've tasted a range of other commercial meads.  A lot are barely mead; some are simply honey, water and brandy - no fermentation at all - blech.  One range of real meads I tried were genuine beekeeper made meads at a market stall in Ludlow.  Not to my taste - very pungent, I suspect the effect of using honey washed from cappings and comb with warm water collecting the medicinal flavours from the beeswax.

Trouble is, it is expensive to buy honey for meadmaking now the jars have shrunk in the shops, and all my beekeeping friends seem not keen on me using it for mead.  Much less DW and DS, who eat much more of the stuff than me.