Honey Bees from Academic Wino
“Oh, it doesn’t have as much flavor.”
“It’s easy to hide the origin of filtered honey.”
“I’m one of the weirdos who thinks that eating things that are ‘natural’ gives me some sort of bragging rights, but no one else cares or knows why, so I prefer raw honey.”
This could explain why so many commercial meads mention their “raw” or “cold processed” honey right on their packaging, website, every conversation you have with them, etc. Maybe, we’re all just trying to convince you that our mead is mystically better because we were personal friends with each and every bee who made our honey.
The truth is, as usual, much more interesting. The reason we use barely processed honey is that the residual pollen is extremely important for a happy, healthy mead fermentation. We were going to write up a summary of the current research and data, but then we found out that someone has already done it really, really well.
So, we present to you, the excellent work of the Academic Wino:
Enhancing the Sweet Nectar: The Effect of Pollen Addition on Fermentation and Sensory Characteristics of Mead
Oh, and weird thing we just learned, the Academic Wino is a St. Michael’s grad! If she had graduated just a little later, maybe she’d be writing a mead blog…
