Reality Check

No one seems to know what is causing the disappearing bee problem.

Just over a year ago, I reported on this (http://realitycheck.blogsome.com/2007/02/28/honey-bees-dying-us-wide/) and I have heard people say I wasn’t reporting clearly, or was making it up.

Fox News carried a short segment today with a bee keeper from Pennsylvania who stated exactly what I stated many months back, that the bees are indeed dying, no one knows the cause, and we need to find the reason and try to mitigate the problem. Finally he stated that the disorder as they are calling it at this time, will indeed affect food prices in the future.

Here’s how it will affect us.

Bees pollinate many of our food crops, in fact something like 80% of our crops use bees as the source of pollination. While I have heard people say things like “Plants have been being pollinated for a long time before people were here so there is no problem” they fail to realize that a good portion of the crops we grow in the US were introduced here by Europeans more than 400 years ago.

Of course this is only the “European Honeybee” while not native to the US originally is one of several thousand species of bees that live in the US, but they are the bees that produce the honey we use in food (and in my case making mead).

Bees are moved, usually by truck along areas where crops need to be pollinated. Many of those bees are dying, and thus those truckers, and the bee keeper’s livelihoods are being affected. Farmers’ crops are not getting the pollination required to either form seeds or help to bring crops to maturity.

This will increase the cost of food not only locally, but world wide.

With rising fuel prices, we’re in for a serious problem over the next couple of years.

I already predicted a rise in food prices in 2007. Now that is being confirmed. I make mead, which is wine made from honey. The cost of honey is already increasing, but not drastically, yet. I suspect that it will become more and more scarce over the next two or three years. I don’t see us able to easily produce mead without it costing a lot of money in the near future - and with me, working on setting up a business to do just that, I’m having second thoughts about this economy right now and putting so much effort into doing so.

Bees have suffered close to a 33% destruction rate in the past 2-3 years according to the Fox News segment this morning. (I did capture that and will attempt, no promises, to get that put up online soon and link it in this article.)

I’ll update this more as I find more information.

In summary:

1) CCD is NOT a parasite infestation. While there are parasites that kill bees and they do indeed wipe out whole colonies, this is not a yet-known parasite.

2) 33% of the bee population in the United States is ALREADY GONE.

3) There is nothing to show this Disorder is slowing or declining.

4) There is nothing to show that bees are emerging stronger.

5) There is going to be an effect on prices of honey, and crops that depend on bee pollination.

6) Readers who are skeptical are asked to do some research before they “pooh-pooh” this situation, but I welcome comments from people who actually know something about this situation and who are affected directly like beekeepers, meadmakers and those who use honey, or run farms with crops.

Update Thursday, 12 May 2008 0830

Here’s some links to help you understand more about the bee problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_Collapse_Disorder
Video
The Silence of the Bees
USDA article
http://www.ento.psu.edu/MAAREC/ColonyCollapseDisorder.html

As opposed to the Socialist Party in America and other parts of the world, May Day, or as it was originally known, Mayday - the first of May denotes not “solidarity” with the Communists of the world but rather an ancient practice of ringing in the Spring time.

In the ancient world, Beltane (spelled in several different ways) was considered “the first of Spring time” and was planting season, and ’twas the new day for new life to come to the world.

Many years ago our Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) fighting group took on the persona of various Irish and Scottish fighting persons from ancient times. We worked out our histories (of the assumed-persona) so that we might “live in the time of those who went before us” and we fought on the field of battle in armor against various and sundry foes. During all of this we learned much of the history of the real Irish and Scottish ancestors of our families. We also learned, and spent time living in the woods of Virginia and Pennsylvania to practice these “rites”.

Now, of course we had our real lives, our work and families (most of our families were part of this so as to participate in the battles and see first-hand how medieval persons might have lived). Over the course of twenty-five years, some of us today still practice some of the “rituals” that we learned of to this day. I think the learned public might call us “Neopagans” - though most of us are Christian in faith.

In truth, we are all conservatives but, we do harken back to the days of yesteryear where a Spring Festival was a time of renewal, planting time and at night to break open a bottle of mead and to drink of the Nectar of the gods… thus have these practices brought my wife and I around to the skill of making honey wine, or mead.

Today - this evening for us, will be both a day of celebration for Spring and a sad day in the passing of another part of our lives. Three of our grandchildren will leave the state and move on to another state today with their mother, our son’s ex-wife and her new husband. Between them they have seven children from both families and one more on the way.

For them this move perhaps will be a good one and all my wife and I can do is hope and pray that our grandchildren will again return to visit us some day or that we may visit them in their new home in the future. So, tonight we visit with the children for the last time before they leave and we will, with the rest of our remaining children and grandchildren celebrate the coming of a new Spring and planting season… and what the hell, open a bottle of mead and raise it to the heavens in thanks for another year on this planet.

May you all have a Happy and Blessed Beltane!

(Or)

Bealtaine Shona!

Reality Check :: Mead

Good day all. In the last few days my wife and I decided to crack open a couple of bottles of our first two batches of mead. The very first batch, mostly our first experiment in mead making is well over two years old - that is bottled more than two years ago.

The second batch was a mead with berries. We call it our “Christmas Mead” because we generally make it before Christmas and then try it the following year.

All I can say about both batches is “WOW!!!!!!”

Patience, they say, is a virtue - but in this case, patience makes awesome mead.

The first batch was a beautiful honey-yellow, as it should have been, and was very sweet, unlike what it tasted like in the beginning.

The red mead was brilliant, ruby red, also sweet, clear and had a distinct honey and berry flavor.

All I can say is if you’ve never had a good mead you should try it. If you haven’t ever made it, try it. If you have made it, have patience and let it age!

That’s all for now.

Making Mead 101:

First off, I’m not an "expert" on mead, but I make mead, and we’ve been doing it for a couple of years. I’m on roughly my 10th or 12th batch.  So, with that caveat, I’m going to teach you a little about  making mead yourselves.

Mead making has been around for literally thousands of years, stories of its existence go back as far as the Romans, Greeks, Norse, and Egyptians in literature and articles I’ve read over the years.

My first exposure to "Mead" was through a friend named Mike, whom we called "Father Barnabus" or "Friar Tuck" based on the garb he wore a various medieval festivals and Society for Creative Anachronism functions we attended together.  Mike introduced us to Mead in the mid 1980s when he produced several batches of the stuff to take to the "Pensic Wars" in Pennsylvania (an SCA function where thousands of folks arrived and partied for a month in the woods, Medieval style, and we had large-scale battles in full armor — usually BEFORE getting drunk that night).

Basically, Mead is wine made from honey. Very basically, wine is fermented fruit juices.  The juice is usually squeezed from the fruits, such as grapes, then the juices might be cooked or simply placed into a fermentation container, and yeast added to the mix. 

Yeast then converts the sugars into alcohol.  After some time, usually 3 weeks to a couple of months, depending on the sort of sugars, and quantities and so forth, the juices are converted into a wine.  Generally there are other steps taken to clarify, and then of course you need to bottle the wine.

The very basic process is not difficult to do.

What I will cover here is a very basic "course" on making your first batch of mead.  Before I go on, I do not endorse any of the sites I link here, I simply am using these links as examples.  Do your own research and pricing.

I want you to remember two words and apply them to everything you do when making this first batch.

Cleanliness

Patience

Cleanliness, they say is next to godliness and when making "the drink of the gods" I would say that this is a rather important word.  It’s even MORE important when making beer though. So, practice cleanliness first, and I’ll explain as we go along.

Patience, they say, is a virtue. I don’t know about that, but I’ll say that when you make your first batch of mead — patience comes in the form of WAITING to drink it all.  I will cover this before I tell you HOW to make it.

We made our very first batch of mead and then tried drinking it some few days after it was bottled.  It tasted fine, but it had a "bite" to it, the alcohol content was high, roughly 14% to 16%.  The taste of the mead was there, as it should be, but the bite was rough.  It actually hurt to drink it.  It is like drinking straight whiskey when you’re not used to drinking whiskey.

Given over a year from the making of that batch though, it mellows out.  The taste becomes smooth, sweetish and has a very distinctive flavor.

So, when I say patience, I mean make that first batch, and try it.  However, put at least half of it away, store it on a dark shelf in a cool place for at least a year and then try it again. You will be amazed.

In the mean time, make a few more batches while the year goes on (and try a bit of beer too). I do both. I make beer and it’s usually ready to drink in 3 weeks or so.  Give wine a few months.

The more "stuff" you try with your mead though, the more patience you have to have.  With that said, let’s talk about making it.  My wife and I experiment a lot and try various things with the mead.  We’ve got one “signature” wine so far.  It even has a name.  One day, perhaps you can try it.  We will see.

Equipment:

A notebook, in which to write down your recipe, directions and procedures you’ve used, changed, followed or just to keep notes is very, very important if you’re going to make more than one type or batch of mead in your life.  I strongly recommend you write down everything you do, how much of this or that you add, what kind of honey, times it takes to do certain things, temperatures, hydrometer readings (if you eventually use a hydrometer), types of yeasts and results of every action you perform.  Why? Because trust me on this one, you WILL REGRET IT IF YOU DO NOT WRITE THIS STUFF DOWN FROM THE BEGINNING.  One day, you will hit the perfect recipe that makes the  perfect wine, beer or mead and you will not have written it down and you and your spouse will argue about the exact amounts and try as you might you will not be able to duplicate it.  Get a notebook and keep track of what you’re doing. Not a computer, a NOTE BOOK. Put it on disk later.

You need a kitchen, or place to work.

You also need a few other items. 

You will need one large cooking pot, most preferably a stainless steel pot.  Copper works too, but it’s pretty expensive.  I’ve got a very, very large stainless steel pot I bought specifically for brewing beer and mead. I bought mine at Wal-Mart for about fifty bucks, but as long as it holds at least three gallons of fluids you should be good to go. Here’s a picture of one. http://www.acemart.com/graphics/00000001/products/VOL47724.jpg

You will need a large steel spoon, and a smaller pan – sauce pan.  Any utensils you use ought to be steel. Why? I don’t like using aluminum and I’m a bit paranoid about using aluminum for cooking.  They corrode after a time, and there is a possibility of aluminum being linked to things like Alzheimer’s and other diseases.  So, I don’t want to take chances.  Wooden spoons will hold smells, flavors and other things you might not be keen about having in your cooking.

A fermentation container will be required.  Your batches… in fact a standard batch of beer and wine, is generally five or six gallons.  I highly recommend you obtain a five or six gallon carboy as your secondary container.  A plain, ordinary food service bucket in 6 gallon size is good to start with if you can get them with a lid.  I started with a 6 gallon bucket and one 6 gallon carboy. 

Picture of a carboy, with airlock and brewing beer… http://www.mattplude.com/images/lg_ferment.jpg

Here are some buckets: http://jerryrig.com/logd/images/2002/02/21/buckets.jpg

And one like I use: http://www.weekendbrewer.com/images/bucket1.jpg

You will need a large funnel for moving the contents of the cooking pot to your fermentation container, unless you are using a bucket for the container.  I had to actually go to the automotive section of a store to find one large enough for my uses.  I simply ran it through the dishwasher the first time before use.  They are made from plastic, so I don’t think it makes a whole lot of difference.

You’ll also need some plastic tubing for siphoning off the wine from one container to another container. This is known as ‘racking’.  Another thing you will need is a cork for the carboy, with a hole in it for putting in a “fermentation lock”.   I purchase my stuff from this place:  The Homebrew Shop in Colorado Springs. Duane is a good old beer maker, and knows a lot about wines and mead as well as beers.  He’s a good guy.  If you need to order things, you can do so from him and tell him you read about him in an article I wrote, if you would please.  I don’t think it will get you a discount, but at least he will get a bit of exposure from this I hope.  There are other places to buy from over the internet.  He’s not necessarily the cheapest, but he’s certainly not the worst place from which to order.

A fermentation lock or airlock is a plastic device you fill with water, wine or vodka to keep air and impurities out of the fermentation vessel and still allow the gasses out of the container. Here are some pictures of a couple different types.

http://www.ebrew.com/Products_A/vinty_type_airlocks.jpg

http://www.bodensatz.com/pictures/airlock.jpg

You will require some bottles, corks or some method of bottling the mead when it is ready to be bottled.

You can purchase bottles with ceramic tops (like Grolsch beer bottles for example) or you can use regular wine bottles, corks and a corking machine.  We’re talking a bit of money here so what I did to start was buy and drink grolsch beer, save the bottles and start with that. Remember you’re making a 5 gallon batch. That’s two full cases of wine bottles.  Where I buy mine, they cost about 15 bucks for a case of 12. Then you need corks, they are cheaper but you have to buy new corks each time you bottle (can’t reuse the old ones!)  A corking machine like I have will set you back around 60 bucks. Here’s a picture of the one I have. http://www.the-home-brew-shop.co.uk/usrimage/cat121.jpg

So, start off cheap.  (And you don’t have to buy bottles right away, hell it’s going to be a MONTH before you’re even READY to think about bottling, at least.)

Materials required for making a batch of Mead:

Get yourself a gallon of regular, unscented household bleach. Any brand, as long as 1) it is unscented, plain, ordinary bleach, and 2) it can be used as a disinfectant.  You’re going to use this in small quantities over the course of your mead making career to disinfect all your pots, pans, utensils, and other objects that will eventually come into contact with the mead.  Remember my admonishment about “Cleanliness”? Well, this is where that comes in.

Honey:  For one batch of mead, we’re going to use five quarts.  One gallon and one quart of any kind of honey you can get your hands on.  I highly recommend you get non-pasteurized, non-filtered honey fresh from an apiary or bee keeper.  The less processed your honey, the better.  I personally get mine from a local bee keeper, and buy in quantities of 3-5 gallons at a shot.  I use clover and wild flower honey for different recipes.  I recommend you get a wild flower honey to start and just use that.  You might also, depending on the region in which you live, try something like Orange Blossom honey, or some other flower-flavors.  Up to you. 

Water:  You’ll need around four gallons of fresh, clean, clear water. I use tap water. You can use tap water too.  Or, if you want to make sure you don’t have odd smells from your local well water, then, certainly buy some from the grocery store. 

Yeast energizer and nutrients:  Nitrogen compounds such as diammonium phosphate are vital to yeast metabolism. This material provides essential minerals, trace nutrients and vitamins for yeast growth and metabolism during fermentation. Should be added at beginning of fermentation, but could also be added towards the end of a slow or stuck fermentation. 1 teaspoon = approximately 4.5 g. Use 1 teaspoon per gallon for meads, fruit wines and high gravity beers. Using more than the recommended amounts gives unpleasant ammonia smell. Yeast energizer is probably a better choice in most circumstances because it contains extra vitamins and minerals to promote yeast vigor.  You can get this stuff from an online brew place, or locate some local home brew shop that helps you make beer and wine.  Most wines probably don’t need this, but honey is very light in anything that the yeast can use to grow.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=yeast+energizer&btnG=Search

Yeast:  According to a good friend of mine, “bakers yeast” works fine for this.  However, I personally like to use a special champagne yeast. I specifically use “Premiere Cuveé Champagne Yeast” which I obtain from a local brew shop.  I suggest you try either that, or just try brewers or bakers yeast.  It shouldn’t hurt, though I have never tried it myself, I have had mead made with bakers yeast and it tastes fine, though I understand it is more difficult to clarify.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=wine+yeasts&btnG=Google+Search

Clarifier: Check on the internet for various types of materials used.  I use a type that contains shellfish, so if you’re allergic to such things, you don’t want to use the stuff I use (nor drink my wine).  Clarifier is used at the end of the process anywhere from a day to several days prior to bottling. There are several methods.  Mine is simple.  I add stuff in the day or so before bottling and wait for any sediment left to settle to the bottom which can take from a day to a week.

Recently, I started using a small filtration system which pumps the wine through a set of filters, removing any sediment and most of the yeast cells that are left over. It makes a new mead taste… almost aged.  But, age it anyway.

That’s really it.  Nothing else needed.

Get a thermometer, one that will measure from at least 32 degrees F. to boiling which is 212 degrees F.  Candy thermometers are probably not good, because most of them start at higher temps and register even higher than boiling point.  We’re mostly interested in the ranges in which organisms can live and die, somewhere between freezing and boiling.

Preparation you need to do first:

One of the very first things you will do is use a tablespoon or so of the bleach and a bit of water in your big cooking pot and disinfect it carefully.  Generally, I add about a ¼ cup of bleach into the pot, and a half gallon of water, and I use this solution to disinfect all my utensils, spoons, glass plates I use to set spoons and thermometers and other objects that may come into contact with the “must”. Must is the term given to the mixture of honey and water, nutrients and so forth.  It’s not mead yet, but it’s no longer just honey.

Make sure you also disinfect the inside of your fermentation vessel and rinse everything well in clear, cool water afterward to ensure that no disinfectant remains. Bleach in small quantities can kill the yeast.  Most tap water hasn’t got enough chlorine in it to hurt the yeast though, but there is not enough to disinfect anything either by the time it reaches your facet.

Basic instructions:

Put one to one and a half gallons of water into your cooking pot and start it heating.  In the mean time, you might want to take your honey, set the covered container(s) of the honey into another large pot and pour or run HOT water over it for a time. I generally set mine in a big pot, run 120 degree water into the pot and let it set for the time it takes to get the water boiling.  This makes it easier to pour out of the containers into the boiling water.

Add the energizer and nutrients in the recommended amounts (check the package) to the water in the pot and bring the water to a boil, a good, hard, roiling boil.  At this point check the water, make sure it’s really at 212 degrees if you have a thermometer. I live in the mountains at a higher altitude than most people, so the higher you are, the quicker the water boils at a lower temperature.   Let it boil for “a few minutes”. 

While the water is boiling, now is a really good time to add cold water to the fermentation vessel.  If you’re using a carboy, simply add three gallons of cold water (colder the better, as this will help to quickly cool the honey-water mixture when you add it to the container later) to the container.  I use a one-gallon water jug, fill it with cold tap water and a funnel to make it easier to pour into the carboy.  Set the carboy someplace where you’re going to work, where you can place the hot pot later to ladle the contents over to the carboy as well.  (Remember you want to set things close by so you don’t spill, make a mess or burn yourselves!)

There’s no set time to this stuff, not precisely, so… experiment and don’t worry too much, since it’s difficult to make mistakes.

Once the water has boiled for a few minutes, 5-10 probably is good, remove it from the heat source and add the 5 quarts of honey to the water, stirring it in as you go, making sure it dissolves and isn’t lumpy or sticky in the bottom of the pan.  Add all five quarts.

Now replace the pot of “Must” on the heat.

Bring the MUST back to a boil and if you have a thermometer check the temperature.  Watch the pot now, because if you boil this stuff over, it’s going to create a mess that is very hot, sticky and extremely difficult to clean up after!

Once it reaches boiling, turn off the heat and carefully keep eyes on your thermometer holding the temperature at around 160 degrees for ten to twelve minutes.   We call this the “sanitation stage”.  This will kill off any wild yeast or bacteria or anything else in the honey.  Once this has been accomplished remove the Must from the stove.   Let it set a few minutes to begin cooling.

At this point, if I am using dried yeast, I “activate” the yeast.  I take a bowl of warm water, around 100 degrees from the tap usually, and then add the contents of one or two packages of yeast to the bowl of water.  Stir it into the water, cover it with a small dish to keep “wild yeast” and other things from joining the action in the bowl and then set it aside.  Usually I place it on the stove where I’ve just finished working on the must, and where it is still a warm and happy place for the yeast to start on its new life.  Ignore the yeast for awhile and go to the next step.

Normally, I carry the pot over to a large table in my kitchen, and have already placed the carboy with the chilled water next to it.  This makes it easier to spoon out the must from the pot to the carboy or bucket.

On thing I do prior to adding the must to the fermentation vessel is to aerate the must.  There are several ways to do this, but I use a small kitchen hand mixer and put the beaters into the must, then turn on the mixer, allowing the beaters to grab air and put it into the must.  You do this for wine, but not for beer.  You want as much oxygen to get into the must as you can, but you want to keep beer from getting much air at all.  That’s just the way it is.

If you using a carboy, insert a funnel into the carboy and use the small sauce pan mentioned in the previous details as a large ladle, and then I carefully ladle the contents of 2 or so gallons of must from the cooking pot through the funnel and into the carboy.  If you’re using a bucket then just ladle the must into the cold water of the bucket. 

Now you have a big glass jar (or bucket) full of five gallons of reasonably hot liquid and you have a couple more things yet to do.  You need to check the temperature on the must and make sure it is well within the temp range for adding your yeast in.  The yeast will die if you drop it very hot water and you won’t get fermentation started.

Depending on the type of yeast you’re using, the must temperature should be between 80 and 100 degrees F.  Remember you “activated” the yeast in the bowl earlier, so all you have to do now is let the temperature drop to somewhere in that range, then add it to the must.  Adding yeast is actually called “pitching the yeast”.

That’s almost finished.  Put your cork and airlock into the bottle, or if you’re using a bucket, usually there is a hole in the lid, with a grommet, into which you will put your airlock.  So with a bucket, drop the lid on, seal it down, place the airlock in place.  Once the airlock is place add some water up to the mark on the airlock, depending on the sort you’re using and sit back and wait.

If everything went well, within a few hours the airlock will show signs that the yeast is doing its job.  It can take anywhere from about an hour to several hours for anything to happen.  If it goes more than 24 hours, then you might have to try adding more yeast.

If you look closely, you should see the must swirling around, and tiny bubbles boiling up the surface. If you have a bucket that is closed, then watch the airlock, and you will see gas bubbles being released.  Either way, if you’re seeing bubbles, you’re seeing the yeast working.

Generally it will take from three weeks to about a month for the fermentation process to pretty much complete.  Over this time a lot of the dead yeast cells will settle and you will do something to help clear your mead.

I keep another carboy and buckets around.  After it appears most of the fermentation is complete, I rack (or move) the mead into another container, being careful to leave as much sediment as I can in the old container.   Over the course of about a month, the mead should have cleared up considerably and depending on the type of honey you used, taken on a clear, pale yellow color.  Typically, I will rack it to a new container and let it settle even more. 

Remember I said “Patience”, since it does take some time to do this.  At this point depending on the clarity of the mead, I will add a chemical clarifier.  There are several different ways to do this.  At this point I am going to recommend for your first batch you simply rack your mead to a clean container, pull a small glass full aside for tasting and let it set at least 2-3 more weeks.  Replace your airlock.

Taste your new wine. 

At the end of the wait, rack it again.  By the end of this time it should have cleared very well.  Rack it once more, let it set again for another 2-3 weeks and assuming it has reached good clarity, bottle it. 

You can actually drink it right away from the day you consider it finished fermenting, but I promise if you wait and let it age at least 6 months you will be happy with your final product. 

We’ve let several batches age well over a year and they are just awesome, even in comparison to previous taste testing at the beginning and ending of the aging process.

If you have problems with clarification of the mead, then I would suggest you try a commercial method of clarification first and do a bit of research on it.  There are also some “home remedies”, like using a couple of tablespoons dried, ground eggshells and stirring that into the mead and letting it settle out.  There is a method of using egg whites, but I’ve never tried it. 

There are several other methods as well, but I suggest you read up on them before you try them.

I’ll do another installment of this soon, telling you a bit about bottling wine – hopefully before you’re all ready to bottle your first batch.  If you have any questions, comments or want any more information than I’ve already given here, feel free to contact me at n0njy@earthlink.net.  Enjoy your Mead, but remember it is probably pretty strong so don’t drink and drive! 

Good luck –  Rick Donaldson