Water content of the honey

I purchased a refractometer to measure the water content of the honey (RHB-90ATC). It is a cheap instrument and it is not that easy to calibrate. Never the less I got it done so that I was satisfied. I measured just 15% water in the honey which is just great - far from the critical level of 20%. If the water content becomes higher there is a significant risk of contamination of microbiologic organisms

Just for comparison I measured the water content og a commercial product. It was 19%. This also give me some certainty that the calibration is OK, since I would expect a commercial product to be as high in water content as possible so that there is more to sell from the same batch of honey. 

All I can say is "Buy honey from your local bee keeper and get more honey and less water!! "

Honey for mead - but how much

To put honey aside for a mead I need to figure out how much I need. I have been looking for another yeast that gives a bit less alcohol and I found a mead yeast capable of 15% given the best conditions   (White Labs WLP-720)

 

Last year my yeast maxed out at 16% and changed the gravity by about 115. Ken Schramm specifies a gravity change og about 100 for a 14% yeast, i.e 1% per 7(+) gravity change.

7.2 kg to 20L gave a OG of 120. If i want the mead to be a bit sweet I want FG to be around 20, so with a 15% yeast I need an OG of 20+100+7 = 127. Assuming that the water content was like last year I need to start with 7.2kg / 120 * 127 = 7.6kg

So 7.6 kg was collected in a 10L container. When used, i just need to wash the entire content into the pot. The container can easily be washed on the outside before I make the mead so i can just pour water back and forth to ensure that the entire mass of honey is dissolved

This will be the base mead. I will likely end up making melomels so now is the time to select berries...

Cleaning the surface of the harvested honey

I left the barrel with honey  for a few days so that bubbles and wax particles could rise to the surface. With a bit of patience the bulk honey becomes quite clear and the surface then looks like this

I was actually quite surpriced how easy it is to clean the surface. Just cut a peace of parchment paper (the stuff used for wrapping in lunch boxes) in a circle just a bit larger than the surface. Lay the paper on the surface, so that the entire surface is covered an pad it where smal air bubbles are trapped. Let it sit for a short while. 

Remove the parchment paper slowly by pulling it off from the edge. The process can be repeated if neccessary but it "costs" about 200 g of honey. For me once was just fine.

Final yield: 22.8 kg for one magasine with 10 plates (12x10)  :o). Hope I can do that again later this year.

I plan to use part of the honey for one batch of mead, take enough for excessive house hold use and then sell the rest as early summer honey.

First honey harvest

Long time since my last post. Living in the garden house without internet makes it a bit expensive to use the phone...

Never the less I could hardly lift the first honey compartment mid june, so then it was time. Some friends helped out which made it a very enjoyable day

A week prior to the harvesting day I had inserted a plate with a one way passage to empty the magasine to be harvested for bees. It is the narrow plate between the two top magasins in the pic below

At the day of harvesting there was only about 100 bees in the magasin, compared to the typical 10000 to 15000 usually in there.

My little helper an I dressed up and got started

Almost completely sealed plates - all 10 of them. Then the lid on each cell was scraped off, an the plates was then placed in the sling, 2 at a time

The honey passes through a sieve inside the sling and is then collected in a bucket.

The bucket is then emptied into another sieve into the final barrel.

A very simple process, and the smell in the kitchen was just fantastic. So great that the extensive cleaning afterwards is all worth while :)

All in all we collected 23 kg from just one magasine (12x10) - EXCELLENT!  8 kg for one batch og mead has of cause already been set aside.

This is my early summer honey. I expect to harvest once again in July and possibly also in August