Stinky Smelly Honey

[WVMJ]

There are more and more beeks joining which is very good for a mead forum. Sometimes beeks run across some stinky smelly honey. You cant blend too much of it into the stuff you are going to sell or it might give an off taste. I think a lot of beeks just let stinky honey in the hive for the bees to eat over the winter. So what if you have a lot of it? We picked up some Russian Olive honey really cheap, it has a nasty medicinal taste and a wierd smell! I was thinking if I boil it like they used to in the old days that would drive off the weird taste and smell. Typically if you have good honey heating is the last thing you want to do but in this case it worked very well. It turned a stinky weird honey into a generic regular tasting honey must, kind of like if we had used some big box stores honey. Perfect for a spiced mead, we also made a traditional with it just to see how it would turn out. A little extra nutrients and P.Cuvee and off they went and fermenting away. WVMJ

 

[Oberon67]

"Stinky Smelly Honey"

I had an ex-girlfriend like that...

 

[nickwoo]

you might want to try the caramelized honey mead where you cook the honey before adding it to the must.

 

[WVMJ]

I had originally planned on doing a Bochet with this honey but we already have a few of those now so we decided to go with boiling in a way that could be commonly done by anyone easily. WVMJ

 

[honeycon]

I just re-checked my honey stash and have about 9# of the above mentioned stinky, smelly honey. Some of it from 2 years ago.
My problem is that I do not really have a clear idea of what to do with it . It was suggested to boil it. Does this reduce the volume much? I have read a bit on bochets. Seems kinda extreme. Especially for someone who has only just racked his first ever batch into secondary.
As a beek I have a fair amount of honey at my disposal. But really would like some advise on using up that nasty, smelly stuff.
And yes I am definitely already planning my 2nd batch..and 3rd batch...

 

[WVMJ]

For a Bochet you literally burn the honey down, caramelizing the sugars, the water is gone, the proteins coagulated in clumps, normally you add back some water to make it pourable since you are going to make a mead with it anyway, if you want to save some for candy just run the hot stuff thru a wire filter to get the clumps out.

Boiling honey is different, you are adding some water to the honey and then boiling it, historically early meadmakers did it to seperate out the wax and sterilize the must, taking it off the heat well before it got thicker. It wasnt very long ago, a couple decades, most people boiled their honey for making a mead, nowadays we want to keep the varietal aromas and flavors so we do the no heat methods. But in the case of stinky honey like we had, you could smell the funkiness leaving in the fumes and the bad tastes got heated out also turning a bad honey into a generic tasting honey. We did our boil with 1 gal honey and 1 gal water stirring early to get the honey dissolved well, bought it to a good boil and then let it simmer a while on low.

We are doing spiced meads with this boiled honey as the honey is more for body and sugar and a little bit of honey taste, and also a traditional with it just to see how t he base mead would turn out. Some beekeepers are big enough to have wax melters, the honey from that gets much darker during the heating, it is commonly sold to bakers very cheaply, but I think its better to make mead with it, much value added that way instead of lost.

WVMJ

 

[Beek]

The only smelly honey I've come across is goldenrod which only stinks in large amounts. Like when we are extracting 12 barrels a day of it, the extracting room gets kind of stinky. But in smaller bottles it smells fine.

 

[WVMJ]

Yeah, I have smelt that sweaty gym sock smell in the fall, but it tastes good. The stuff we have supposedly from Russian Olives not only smells bad but tastes funny. We were going to do an experiment where we split a batch and boil one and the other would be raw to see how much of the aroma is lost, in doing this batch with smelly honey boiling very clearly destroys some aromas. Hope your bees are doing well. WVMJ

The only smelly honey I've come across is goldenrod which only stinks in large amounts. Like when we are extracting 12 barrels a day of it, the extracting room gets kind of stinky. But in smaller bottles it smells fine.

 

[honeycon]

We only get stinky smelly honey in late summer to early fall. It smells like cat pee and tastes almost as bad. The "old hands" in this area always attributed the nasty honey to rabbit brush. Other folks in the country have rabbit brush but OK honey. Some local beeks don't have bees getting into R. Brush, but have nasty honey as well. Our local smelly stuff is very likely a yeast bloom. (Ken Schramm writes about wild yeasts in honey on p. 87 of The Complet Meadmaker) You can literally smell the hives odor change in one day.
But thanks to WVMJ, I now have a much better idea of what to with this honey.

 

[WVMJ]

Schramm is not a beekeeper as far as I know, the bees would not be very happy if their honey was fermenting in the hive due to a yeast bloom, the only time I have had yeast smell was when damnable hive beetles got the better of a hive and slimmed it up. WVMJ

We only get stinky smelly honey in late summer to early fall. It smells like cat pee and tastes almost as bad. The "old hands" in this area always attributed the nasty honey to rabbit brush. Other folks in the country have rabbit brush but OK honey. Some local beeks don't have bees getting into R. Brush, but have nasty honey as well. Our local smelly stuff is very likely a yeast bloom. (Ken Schramm writes about wild yeasts in honey on p. 87 of The Complet Meadmaker) You can literally smell the hives odor change in one day.
But thanks to WVMJ, I now have a much better idea of what to with this honey.

 

[Beek]

Yeah, I have smelt that sweaty gym sock smell in the fall, but it tastes good. The stuff we have supposedly from Russian Olives not only smells bad but tastes funny. We were going to do an experiment where we split a batch and boil one and the other would be raw to see how much of the aroma is lost, in doing this batch with smelly honey boiling very clearly destroys some aromas. Hope your bees are doing well. WVMJ

Yeah that's exactly how we always said golden rod smelled. Sweaty socks. A little of that in a batch of mead that is mostly star thistle honey is damn good. Our bees are looking great. Just got back from loading up our third and fourth semi loads to head to California for almond pollination.