Leland Hoburg

Honey Wine, the Ancient Art of the Maeve Leland Hoburg

Publisher Marketing: The main ingredient of any mead is honey. Imagine what it takes to make a single pound of honey. Thousands of bees must visit 2 million or more flowers. Both the flavor and the color of the honey depend on the kind and variety of the flower that the nectar comes from. Clover honey for example is light in color and mild, while honey from buckwheat is much darker and stronger too. Honey is rich in simple sugars; dextrose and laevulose and contains more calories than ordinary sugar as well as sodium, iron and potassium. It is probably mans oldest sweet food. In many early civilizations, it was extolled as food for the gods, as a gift from the gods or as a giver of immortality. The Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and other ancient peoples used honey in making cakes and candies as well as beverages. It was also used to make salted meat more palatable, hence honey hams. Wherever there was a large orchard there was sure to be an apiary. It was very common for households to have a small orchard as well as a small apiary, or for locals to get together and contribute the honey that had been gathered over the summer to a brewer who would make mead for them. There are several different types of honey that can be used for mead but the most common is a good clover honey. Clover honey gets its name from what the bees make it out of. You can also acquire a raspberry, apple, orange, peach, or other fruit honey. You can use almost any honey in the making of mead. Strongly flavored honeys (orange blossom, buckwheat, wild flower) generally work best for Metheglin while clover honey works well for fruit meads and will result in a very delicately flavored and light gold color, but very light honeys (like alfalfa) are not very suitable as they give poor flavor and almost no color. I do use raspberry or other fruit honey when making mead with that particular flavor. If you plan to make traditional mead (honey and water) then you should use a stronger flavored honey as this will be the single thing that will give your mead its character. Contributor Bio:  Hoburg, Leland An earned Master's degree in Business Administration (2004) from Western Illinois University with concentrations in International Business, Marketing, and Finance; and an earned Bachelor's degree (1999) in Liberal Arts with minors in Marketing and Management from Western Illinois University-Quad Cities.