with my honey shine, i only oaked it for 2-3 months. It turned out great that way. I would recommend bottling half of it and leaving the other half go a bit longer. That way you can see what happens without risking all of it
Not entirely. All depends on the distillation process. There's little things that control smoothness. Plus he's likely gotten used to higher proof spirits.
Not exactly. I can drink 150 proof and make no face. Just depends on tolerance and how much of an alcoholic you truly are. Nothing to brag about but tolerance makes a difference with your comment.
Hi Jesse. I keep bees in the uk and distill quite a bit of my mead. I have to say that I've started to barrel mine as I could never get the timing right with staves in glass. I would keep leaving it to the point where it was over oaked. In a barrel, the fact that it can breath seems to help. Loving the vids
You'll want to have bottles on the ready at about 9m. I used tequila barrel staves. Aging temp was 72F +/- 2F. Adding 10-15ml honey back to each 750ml is epic.
Done mine at 54%, used medium toast oak (no char) for 6 months. Got nice gold color, full body, lots of honey getting bumped up by the vanilla from the wood. Little banana as well.
Honestly jessy this is y we all love you straight good old talk aboit sometijg you and most of our subscribers love. Nice to see the the Summer coming to you soon I'm here in wet and windy UK lol 🇬🇧👍
Great video! Glad you finally made some, as I sent you that sample back in early 2020 you said you and your wife really enjoyed. I have aged some with oak chips before, but have consistently found that I enjoy the unaged honey spirit much more than the oaked. The oak seems to take away the lovely floral notes and mute the honey flavors a bit, whereas the unaged spirit remains vibrant, floral, and retains its honey character. Keep up the great work man!
Been running lots of honey batches over the last couple years. I agree with him about using different types of Honey to get different flavors. I've used everything from clover honey, Sage, avocado, and even some Chardonnay infused honeys. I've ran everything from rums to vodkas to Bourbon to Brandy's. But honey is probably my favorite to do. It mixes very well with Brandy's. I always use a medium toast to age.
I’m a beekeeper in California and I’ve been working with my boss and a local distillery to produce ten cases of honey shine for a local restaurant. Thanks for making these videos as the spirit is really tasty and deserves attention! Awesome to see how many people have tried this themselves! Side note if anyone has advice navigating the FDA’s GRAS list please let me know. We’ve been rinsing the honey off of pressed comb to start the ferment so we need to clear propolis, pollen and wax for the distilled spirit.
i found some honey left over from back when i had beehives (10 years ago). I figured "what the heck" and made a small batch of honeyshine. Tastes good right out of the still. Put some charred white oak chips in with it today. Cant wait to see how it turns out.
I started mine out by mashing 3 pounds cherry wood smoked malt, added honey to bring the mash to an OG of 1.090. Finished out my 70% honey whiskey for 5 weeks on Hungarian oak cubes, medium toast then lowered to 46%. The sweetness of the honey and smoke made an excellent drink.
If mead is ever revisited, see if you can do different types of honey and see if there are different flavor profiles. For instance, if I am in the need for honey, I prefer honey that was harvested from a orange orchard hive but, I also do like apple orchard honey as well for when I bake.
I hypothetically may have done a batch of honey shine aged on light toasted amburana and it turned out amazing! I've now decided I may want to do a gallon white oak barrel then put a little amburana on it in it's last few weeks!
Bottle a 200 mL sample of the aged to keep aside right now to compare with whatever you have later! It's not enough to change too much your volume and you have a reference when you taste the older one in the future. Take notes in the bottle of dates etc not to forget. And if your batch goes south, well you'll have a precious souvenir sample to enjoy!
This has been really cool to follow. From the profiles you described I wonder how it would react to something like a virgin oak. It would be neat to see maple either as a syrup mash or the uncaramelized fresh liquid.
For maple syrup it's not exactly caramelized. It's boiled yes but the deep color actually comes from aging in wooden barrels. They're often sold to whiskey and other alcohol makers used for finishing. Unbarreled syrup would be cool but I'd personally do it Canadian style and blend different combinations. Ie barrel aged syrup and fresh and unaged spirit and barrel aged spirit and multiple finishing techniques. Try and get as many of the subtler syrup notes out in the spirit
I made the Dominican drink, Mamajuana a few months ago. It was “Americanized” because a true blend of Dominican herbs and bark costs about $50. I decided to put oak chips (40 ish % full) a cinnamon stick, a couple of cloves and maybe a star anise in a mason jar, fill it with a 50/50 mixture of red wine and rum to about an inch from the top, and then drizzle honey in it until it was almost full. I sealed that sucker up and shook it every few days… tasted… shook it… until I liked the flavor (a couple of weeks). When I bottled it, I left all the flavor fixings behind in the mason jar. Shortly after making Honey Shine, I decided to add my shine to that mason jar. The wood, soaked in rum, wine and honey, along with the spices, made a BEAUTIFUL amber cocktail all by itself. I pulled it based on a beautiful color alone and have been enjoying it ever since. No “over-oaking “ or loss of character. It was a pretty bullet proof experiment. Hope you are able to try it. Enjoy friends. Cheers!
Really interesting comment section here, it's not full of internet crackpots who think they know what's what, I'm actually seeing people that have real experience and that is a very unusual sight in my experience. I'm new to this moonshine subculture but it's pretty interesting so far. Keep it up!
thanks Jesse for this awesome channel, may i suggest to split the oaked version in half and bottle one half and keep aging the other half then compare the 2 versions in time. cheers.
I made a honey shine very shortly after you. Most of it is ageing in a barrel but I have a little play proofing it down with a sugar syrup. It puts the sweetness back into it and makes it taste like alcoholic honey.
Haha! Absolutely mouth watering, loved this episode. This is by far my favorite channel👍 Thought you might have been a tad tipsy, thank you for your honesty wish I was there with you enjoying your spirits in the spirit of Christmas.
I got a tip from a friend from Serbia who said that distilled there lubricate the colon tube with honey when distilling Slibowich. Sounds interesting I think. Christmas wishes from Sweden.
From watching your videos I built a keg still, 3” column with 3” shotgun condenser, ram first cleaning run and another run of sugar wash, atm I have a corn 2row malt fermenting right now. Kinda just said I’ll try all grain hahaha we shall see what happens soonish
I've made some with my table top air still, had several bottles of 2 year old mead that I had made. Figured i'd give a try. I aged it on second use Medium Hungarian Oak for about 6 months...it turned out great....
New Zealand is weird. His pronunciations are so Aussie, yet simultaneously American! It’s hilarious, love this channel especially since I love my hard liquor!
I watched your gin vid a couple times and then used an air still to produce my first couple litres of home gin out of a basic sugar wash. Me and my friends had a gin tasting session only a few days after my final product was in the bottle and it was great. Mine was much better than commercial Tanqueray, but less smooth than an aged sipping gin. By far it was a great result. If it was set aside for a several months it might have challenged the sipping gin. Thank you for your advice. Recipe...50 grm of dried juniper berries, 10 grm of corriander, 2 cardamon pods (all chopped in a coffee grinder, 1 orange peel in 70% stripping run product for 15 hours and then left in the air still for the collection runs.
I’ve made a mead with classic 8 turbo yeast, it went super dry and almost undrinkable however hot off the press is and it’s almost gin like with sweetness I compare it to Bacardi but with honey floral taste ( great with coke). Liquor some with honey made it thick and smooth, fortified some of original mead with honey liquor (honey tawny port taste) however haven’t oaked any because I prefer the white spirit Merry crystalmeth 😉 everyone
I'd use it to some kind of sweet drink... Call it a Stinger. White mead spirit, Sambucus blossoms macerace, decorated with a piece of honeycomb and few Sambucus berries. Thats it! Why? Because Sambucus honey is one of the best ones and i have the feeling those would go really good together.
As a Mazer (mead maker) I'd love to get a still to try this out, but I've gotta say I'm not surprised that the oaked was better. it helps a lot at 12%.
What about doing an after-honey, adding some honey back to the finished distillate I know a number of mead makers and it's a trick to be used to increase the sweetness and flavors in honey.
how about a meaded whiskey? as in using some honey when fermenting your whiskey ale base. you could also try putting some 1month old meadshine into 6month old meadshine to put some fruity/floral back into it while keeping it well smoothed
Try that white mead in a Ransom Note Martini, I bet it would be delightful. 2 oz gin ¾ oz honey mead ½ oz freshly squeezed lemon juice ½ oz honey syrup Ice Lemon slice for garnish. - Yum!
I think the reason why it lost aroma is because you had it in a transparent glass and like a chrome tank. so when it gets to light it changes the aroma / the fruitiness
The honey shine i made was 15lb honey 15lb malted grains in mash . distilled. Aged in a small oak barrel for 3 months. Then i cut it to 48% with the original mead/malt
A Cocktail 🍸 dude with the clear stuff you made 2 shots Clear 4 shots pineapple 🍍 juice one shot of Coconut 🥥 milk ,blended to the shithouse to create that lovely froth and put in a tall Glass 👍🇦🇺🥃
Interesting stuff Jesse. Thanks! I did a honey shine, but I used apple brandy backset to dilute the honey and ferment it. Anyways, the result was unexpectedly great... Full of honey smell and flavor, very thick and dense... Super happy with the result. I do not have american oak though, so I experimented with some toasted chilean wood. And the results were pretty good. I got some oak chips now so, I'll check if I have more white spirit around to do some comparisons. Thanks for the info and cheers!
Goldrush cocktail, it’s super simple balance of just three ingredients of bourbon, honey and lemon juice, I’ve spiked it in the past with absinth and the floral notes of that have paired well so cut back on the honey or remove all together and should go down well! 50 mls bourbon 20 mls lemon 20 mls honey syrup(2parts honey 1 part warm water) Shaken vigorously and served over ice is the original Play with it how you will!
I found that it starts to get really good at 11 months - my last batch is at 13 months and is only getting better - in this last batch, I used 60% light toast oak and 40% medium toast oak - 14 grams in total per liter. I expect it to get better for a while, but I will probably not be able to resist drinking it before it hits two years.
@@mannye Manny - I use toasted oak chips that are designed for use in wine aging. I put a measured amount in each bottle when setting them aside to age.
Given your using staves, I think you could push it, chips on the other hand I’ve always found once it reaches the point of really nice, bottle it, it just goes astringent and down hill really quick from there. Great watching your vids especially during lockdowns , enjoy your well deserved Christmas with family.
I did a 20 litre batch aged on heavy toasted #4 charr AWO. 55%ABV for 18months. I wish I had another batch following up behind it. Simply an amazing tasting spirit.
I am getting ready to start a new batch of mead (so super love this) and planning on distilling some down and adding back to create fortified mead. Have you ever tried jacking instead of distilling?
I'll bottle a small amount like 16oz now and compare it to the next few months. But that's only if you really like it now. Or do stages bottle a little bit on the way to see what's the max you can go?
So I’m curious now the white mead /shine has aged what if you were to oak age now that it settled down what flavors would you get now !!! And also what if you were to back sweeten with a little honey how would that I’mprove or dismantle the profile
I do wonder how a bruchet would work out as it normally adds a caramelized flavor to the mead to begin with, so I wonder if it would follow in the process as well.
This may be a bit crazy, but maybe try distilling some homemade ginger beer. Not sure if the 2ish% alcohol is enough at the start, though. Also, I feel like the honeyshine would be nice to mix in with gin cocktails.
I used oak spirals in mine and after about 3 months (1 gallon of honey brandy with a maybe 6inch spiral) it had great color but was starting to extract tannins, making it too astringent. It did get some nice vanilla, nutty, slightly cherry notes to compliment the flavors of the honey (a local wild flower variety). If I did it again I'd use a stave of about the same size rather than a spiral. I need to try that again actually, it's just been sitting for 1.5 years at this point...
Just thinking if you want a boost of the Honey flavour heat up some more honey to get it nice and liquid and then add it to the Honey Shine and that should be that it's your call.
Why not bottle part of the oaked stuff with minimal headspace (like a crown capped beer bottle) and then keep the rest on oak in a smaller container? Then you can actually do an A-B comparison to see if more time on wood made it better?
Yeah that Honey/ corn bourbon I told you about the other day has full color now after only like 7 days on #3 oak. But I used 1 gal mead and 1 gal corn mash in my thumper and 1 gal of mead went into the mash itself and I ended up with that tequila smell in my new make and even in the 1 week oak mark. Are you saying you didn’t smell that at all in this run?
with my honey shine, i only oaked it for 2-3 months. It turned out great that way. I would recommend bottling half of it and leaving the other half go a bit longer. That way you can see what happens without risking all of it
That's what I was going to suggest!
Spirit-forward cocktail is the term you are looking for. Better stirred, unless there is citrus in there.
The fact that he's tasting and drinking this 100+ proof Mead and isn't making skunk face tells you all you need to know about the glory that is Mead.
Not entirely. All depends on the distillation process. There's little things that control smoothness. Plus he's likely gotten used to higher proof spirits.
Not exactly. I can drink 150 proof and make no face. Just depends on tolerance and how much of an alcoholic you truly are. Nothing to brag about but tolerance makes a difference with your comment.
Glory that is his skill of separating hearts from heads and tails. The man knows how to split.
It was indeed 2nd use American oak. Just watched the original video the other day. Love your content! Keep it up bro. Looks like fun
Hi Jesse.
I keep bees in the uk and distill quite a bit of my mead.
I have to say that I've started to barrel mine as I could never get the timing right with staves in glass. I would keep leaving it to the point where it was over oaked.
In a barrel, the fact that it can breath seems to help.
Loving the vids
You'll want to have bottles on the ready at about 9m. I used tequila barrel staves. Aging temp was 72F +/- 2F. Adding 10-15ml honey back to each 750ml is epic.
Done mine at 54%, used medium toast oak (no char) for 6 months. Got nice gold color, full body, lots of honey getting bumped up by the vanilla from the wood. Little banana as well.
Dude! You've got the basis of an EPIC rendition of a Bee's Knees cocktail.
Add some water to the un-oaked version to make it open up and you are likely to find some of the flavors and smells that "went missing".
Honestly jessy this is y we all love you straight good old talk aboit sometijg you and most of our subscribers love. Nice to see the the Summer coming to you soon I'm here in wet and windy UK lol 🇬🇧👍
I've never thought about steeping oak in the spirits like you're making oak tea
Just started watching
Great video! Glad you finally made some, as I sent you that sample back in early 2020 you said you and your wife really enjoyed. I have aged some with oak chips before, but have consistently found that I enjoy the unaged honey spirit much more than the oaked. The oak seems to take away the lovely floral notes and mute the honey flavors a bit, whereas the unaged spirit remains vibrant, floral, and retains its honey character. Keep up the great work man!
wtf is bro doing here
Been running lots of honey batches over the last couple years. I agree with him about using different types of Honey to get different flavors. I've used everything from clover honey, Sage, avocado, and even some Chardonnay infused honeys. I've ran everything from rums to vodkas to Bourbon to Brandy's. But honey is probably my favorite to do. It mixes very well with Brandy's. I always use a medium toast to age.
I’m a beekeeper in California and I’ve been working with my boss and a local distillery to produce ten cases of honey shine for a local restaurant. Thanks for making these videos as the spirit is really tasty and deserves attention! Awesome to see how many people have tried this themselves!
Side note if anyone has advice navigating the FDA’s GRAS list please let me know. We’ve been rinsing the honey off of pressed comb to start the ferment so we need to clear propolis, pollen and wax for the distilled spirit.
That sounds very cool. I haven’t had honey shine. So I’ll be on the lookout for this restaurant.
Slurring your words at work...love it.
Drambuie comes to mind. Scotch, Heather honey, herbs and spices. The oaked sounds interesting.
i found some honey left over from back when i had beehives (10 years ago). I figured "what the heck" and made a small batch of honeyshine. Tastes good right out of the still. Put some charred white oak chips in with it today. Cant wait to see how it turns out.
I started mine out by mashing 3 pounds cherry wood smoked malt, added honey to bring the mash to an OG of 1.090. Finished out my 70% honey whiskey for 5 weeks on Hungarian oak cubes, medium toast then lowered to 46%. The sweetness of the honey and smoke made an excellent drink.
If mead is ever revisited, see if you can do different types of honey and see if there are different flavor profiles. For instance, if I am in the need for honey, I prefer honey that was harvested from a orange orchard hive but, I also do like apple orchard honey as well for when I bake.
I hypothetically may have done a batch of honey shine aged on light toasted amburana and it turned out amazing! I've now decided I may want to do a gallon white oak barrel then put a little amburana on it in it's last few weeks!
Bottle a 200 mL sample of the aged to keep aside right now to compare with whatever you have later! It's not enough to change too much your volume and you have a reference when you taste the older one in the future. Take notes in the bottle of dates etc not to forget. And if your batch goes south, well you'll have a precious souvenir sample to enjoy!
Crazy good timing. I just did a final racking of a couple gallons of mead and I'm not crazy about the flavor. Might have to try distilling it...
Man that oaked one looks delicious.
Was tempted to say split the Oaked batch
This has been really cool to follow.
From the profiles you described I wonder how it would react to something like a virgin oak.
It would be neat to see maple either as a syrup mash or the uncaramelized fresh liquid.
For maple syrup it's not exactly caramelized. It's boiled yes but the deep color actually comes from aging in wooden barrels. They're often sold to whiskey and other alcohol makers used for finishing.
Unbarreled syrup would be cool but I'd personally do it Canadian style and blend different combinations. Ie barrel aged syrup and fresh and unaged spirit and barrel aged spirit and multiple finishing techniques. Try and get as many of the subtler syrup notes out in the spirit
I made the Dominican drink, Mamajuana a few months ago. It was “Americanized” because a true blend of Dominican herbs and bark costs about $50. I decided to put oak chips (40 ish % full) a cinnamon stick, a couple of cloves and maybe a star anise in a mason jar, fill it with a 50/50 mixture of red wine and rum to about an inch from the top, and then drizzle honey in it until it was almost full. I sealed that sucker up and shook it every few days… tasted… shook it… until I liked the flavor (a couple of weeks).
When I bottled it, I left all the flavor fixings behind in the mason jar. Shortly after making Honey Shine, I decided to add my shine to that mason jar. The wood, soaked in rum, wine and honey, along with the spices, made a BEAUTIFUL amber cocktail all by itself. I pulled it based on a beautiful color alone and have been enjoying it ever since. No “over-oaking “ or loss of character. It was a pretty bullet proof experiment.
Hope you are able to try it. Enjoy friends. Cheers!
We make merryjuana here in West Virginia also....more so for smoking than drinking tho
Really interesting comment section here, it's not full of internet crackpots who think they know what's what, I'm actually seeing people that have real experience and that is a very unusual sight in my experience. I'm new to this moonshine subculture but it's pretty interesting so far. Keep it up!
The base honey spirit, if you like spirit forward cocktails you can substitute it for honey syrups.
thanks Jesse for this awesome channel, may i suggest to split the oaked version in half and bottle one half and keep aging the other half then compare the 2 versions in time.
cheers.
Stick some honey back in to it and call it a liquor or add cream as well and make a honey baileys lol
I made a honey shine very shortly after you. Most of it is ageing in a barrel but I have a little play proofing it down with a sugar syrup. It puts the sweetness back into it and makes it taste like alcoholic honey.
Haha! Absolutely mouth watering, loved this episode. This is by far my favorite channel👍 Thought you might have been a tad tipsy, thank you for your honesty wish I was there with you enjoying your spirits in the spirit of Christmas.
I got a tip from a friend from Serbia who said that distilled there lubricate the colon tube with honey when distilling Slibowich. Sounds interesting I think. Christmas wishes from Sweden.
for the white, keep it simple. throw some orange peels in it and let it sit for a few days
From watching your videos I built a keg still, 3” column with 3” shotgun condenser, ram first cleaning run and another run of sugar wash, atm I have a corn 2row malt fermenting right now. Kinda just said I’ll try all grain hahaha we shall see what happens soonish
I've made some with my table top air still, had several bottles of 2 year old mead that I had made. Figured i'd give a try. I aged it on second use Medium Hungarian Oak for about 6 months...it turned out great....
You should drop a fresh honey comb in the booth and let it sit
New Zealand is weird. His pronunciations are so Aussie, yet simultaneously American! It’s hilarious, love this channel especially since I love my hard liquor!
I watched your gin vid a couple times and then used an air still to produce my first couple litres of home gin out of a basic sugar wash. Me and my friends had a gin tasting session only a few days after my final product was in the bottle and it was great. Mine was much better than commercial Tanqueray, but less smooth than an aged sipping gin. By far it was a great result. If it was set aside for a several months it might have challenged the sipping gin. Thank you for your advice. Recipe...50 grm of dried juniper berries, 10 grm of corriander, 2 cardamon pods (all chopped in a coffee grinder, 1 orange peel in 70% stripping run product for 15 hours and then left in the air still for the collection runs.
I would chuck that straight into apple pie moon shine. I love the stuff, this, when it was young, sounds just right.
yes and yes spot on
Apple cut in Quarters and a cinnamon stick 😋
Great video ! When you're planning a project,the experience of others is always valuable.
I’ve made a mead with classic 8 turbo yeast, it went super dry and almost undrinkable however hot off the press is and it’s almost gin like with sweetness I compare it to Bacardi but with honey floral taste ( great with coke).
Liquor some with honey made it thick and smooth, fortified some of original mead with honey liquor (honey tawny port taste) however haven’t oaked any because I prefer the white spirit
Merry crystalmeth 😉 everyone
I'd use it to some kind of sweet drink... Call it a Stinger. White mead spirit, Sambucus blossoms macerace, decorated with a piece of honeycomb and few Sambucus berries. Thats it! Why? Because Sambucus honey is one of the best ones and i have the feeling those would go really good together.
As a Mazer (mead maker) I'd love to get a still to try this out, but I've gotta say I'm not surprised that the oaked was better. it helps a lot at 12%.
Do you oak all of your Meads?
@@Grandpa_RLP of my own, just one so far. A peach and nectarine mead that's about 12%, but it helps with the mid-high abv meads (10-16%)
A cool trick for fast aging with oak you should try is putting it in the freezer over night and taking it out for the day.
What about doing an after-honey, adding some honey back to the finished distillate
I know a number of mead makers and it's a trick to be used to increase the sweetness and flavors in honey.
Jessie, mix the clear with Tequila. It's then called Dulce and the honey helps the tequila taste great.
I have oak aged mine and it got a lot better
how about a meaded whiskey? as in using some honey when fermenting your whiskey ale base. you could also try putting some 1month old meadshine into 6month old meadshine to put some fruity/floral back into it while keeping it well smoothed
Try that white mead in a Ransom Note Martini, I bet it would be delightful.
2 oz gin
¾ oz honey mead
½ oz freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ oz honey syrup
Ice
Lemon slice for garnish. - Yum!
Hmm. Depending on how sweet it is, you could add the White to a long island to make southern sweet tea
Cheers Jesse - the dark art of barrel aging! As others have suggested, why not bottle some and keep the rest going?
that sounds perfect for making limoncello
Iv been waiting for this!!!
I think the reason why it lost aroma is because you had it in a transparent glass and like a chrome tank. so when it gets to light it changes the aroma / the fruitiness
The honey shine i made was 15lb honey 15lb malted grains in mash . distilled. Aged in a small oak barrel for 3 months. Then i cut it to 48% with the original mead/malt
A Cocktail 🍸 dude with the clear stuff you made 2 shots Clear 4 shots pineapple 🍍 juice one shot of Coconut 🥥 milk ,blended to the shithouse to create that lovely froth and put in a tall Glass 👍🇦🇺🥃
Always great watching your content mate!
these ads will be the bane of my existence. good lord
So is there an update on how it is doing? I like watching as we can't really do this in the US easily as far as I know.
I have made a lot of mead, but never distilled it. Sounds interesting.
I've done this a few times. The honey flavor comes super heavy after about gen 5 if you run it just like UJSSM and it just gets better
Interesting stuff Jesse. Thanks! I did a honey shine, but I used apple brandy backset to dilute the honey and ferment it. Anyways, the result was unexpectedly great... Full of honey smell and flavor, very thick and dense... Super happy with the result. I do not have american oak though, so I experimented with some toasted chilean wood. And the results were pretty good. I got some oak chips now so, I'll check if I have more white spirit around to do some comparisons. Thanks for the info and cheers!
more of this!
Goldrush cocktail, it’s super simple balance of just three ingredients of bourbon, honey and lemon juice, I’ve spiked it in the past with absinth and the floral notes of that have paired well so cut back on the honey or remove all together and should go down well!
50 mls bourbon
20 mls lemon
20 mls honey syrup(2parts honey 1 part warm water)
Shaken vigorously and served over ice is the original
Play with it how you will!
oh boy have I been waiting for this one: i have a friend who removes bees from people's property as a living....
I always wondered about distilled mead so thanks for this video. How I'd love to get my hands on some to taste and develop a cocktail for.
6:37 They're Spirit-forward 😉
I really want this guy to come out with his own brand and cell that “honey 51” 😊
Mead and cherry go good together. I wonder what it would taste like on charred cherry wood!?
I found that it starts to get really good at 11 months - my last batch is at 13 months and is only getting better - in this last batch, I used 60% light toast oak and 40% medium toast oak - 14 grams in total per liter. I expect it to get better for a while, but I will probably not be able to resist drinking it before it hits two years.
How are you aging it? In bottles? On the oak?
@@mannye Manny - I use toasted oak chips that are designed for use in wine aging. I put a measured amount in each bottle when setting them aside to age.
Given your using staves, I think you could push it, chips on the other hand I’ve always found once it reaches the point of really nice, bottle it, it just goes astringent and down hill really quick from there.
Great watching your vids especially during lockdowns , enjoy your well deserved Christmas with family.
I’d be interested in how this would go in an old fashioned
I'd love to try this
Yes that was second use chips for the aging process
Pull off a sample bottle now so you can compare it with the further aged jar. (For science of course)
I did a 20 litre batch aged on heavy toasted #4 charr AWO. 55%ABV for 18months. I wish I had another batch following up behind it. Simply an amazing tasting spirit.
I have made heaps and shared with friends funny though that it doesn't leave me with a hangover.
I am getting ready to start a new batch of mead (so super love this) and planning on distilling some down and adding back to create fortified mead. Have you ever tried jacking instead of distilling?
I propose "Beeskey" as the official name of distilled mead
I'll bottle a small amount like 16oz now and compare it to the next few months. But that's only if you really like it now. Or do stages bottle a little bit on the way to see what's the max you can go?
So I’m curious now the white mead /shine has aged what if you were to oak age now that it settled down what flavors would you get now !!! And also what if you were to back sweeten with a little honey how would that I’mprove or dismantle the profile
Thank you very much. Could we put oak logs in the vodka?
Thanks a lot
I do wonder how a bruchet would work out as it normally adds a caramelized flavor to the mead to begin with, so I wonder if it would follow in the process as well.
I wonder what shine made from heather honey tastes like. That kind of honey is crazy aromatic and spicy
Thats my next project currently fermenting 4 gallons of mead then gonna oak age it
This may be a bit crazy, but maybe try distilling some homemade ginger beer. Not sure if the 2ish% alcohol is enough at the start, though.
Also, I feel like the honeyshine would be nice to mix in with gin cocktails.
Got 2 gallons on Meade w ginger now, used a different yeast , distillers yeast And A wine yeast.
I used oak spirals in mine and after about 3 months (1 gallon of honey brandy with a maybe 6inch spiral) it had great color but was starting to extract tannins, making it too astringent. It did get some nice vanilla, nutty, slightly cherry notes to compliment the flavors of the honey (a local wild flower variety). If I did it again I'd use a stave of about the same size rather than a spiral. I need to try that again actually, it's just been sitting for 1.5 years at this point...
Just thinking if you want a boost of the Honey flavour heat up some more honey to get it nice and liquid and then add it to the Honey Shine and that should be that it's your call.
It's called a spirit forward cocktail! :)
Long Island iced tea mixer, got it ...
Made a suggestion on the white distilled mead in the original video if there is any left to play with.
Great video so interesting!
Why not bottle part of the oaked stuff with minimal headspace (like a crown capped beer bottle) and then keep the rest on oak in a smaller container? Then you can actually do an A-B comparison to see if more time on wood made it better?
You can always make a Long island ice tea ;)
Very interesting.
The white Spirit would be great in a beesknees and the gold Spirit in a penicillin.
Yeah that Honey/ corn bourbon I told you about the other day has full color now after only like 7 days on #3 oak. But I used 1 gal mead and 1 gal corn mash in my thumper and 1 gal of mead went into the mash itself and I ended up with that tequila smell in my new make and even in the 1 week oak mark. Are you saying you didn’t smell that at all in this run?
With the clear stuff I'd make a cocktail with Baileys and white creme de cacao. I bet it would taste like a Toblerone.