Kiwi uni students create a buzz in the market with mead RTDs

From nzherald.co.nz

A couple of university students are taking the craft Ready To Drink (RTD) industry back to the future with one of the world's oldest beverages.

With the market booming throughout New Zealand, many are entering the game with new twists on the classic mixer.

Wilbur Morrison and Edward Eaton, however, are doing something different, and are stirring the honey pot, instead of the drum.

"Traditionally mead is a sort of desert style wine, very sweet and high in alcohol," Eaton said.

Wilbur Morrison and Edward Eaton are producing something unique in the RTD market.     Photo / Supplied 

 

"But we're trying to modernise that and bring it into the 21st century by creating a low alcohol sparkling mead, that's low in sugar."

Dating back thousands of years, brewing mead from honey is an age old classic.

Consisting of Native Kamahi Honey and Hawke's Bay lemon, The Buzz Club's Session Mead revolutionises the historic drink, and instead sits uniquely on New Zealand shelves.

"It's a got a light honey nose, a sort of touch of floral," Morrison said. "A lot of people expect it to be really rich and sweet but actually it's light and refreshing."

After becoming part of his parents' bee keeping business, Morrison said the inspiration for mead came out of pure chance.

The Buzz Club has begun distributing throughout areas of Christchurch.

Photo / Supplied

"My parents started beekeeping about three years ago and it wasn't going very well, so I jumped in and used my life savings to buy into the business which I ran while I was at uni. I used to get my mates out to come and help keep the bees, and one day one of them said have you heard of mead, to which I said never."

Morrison paired up with longtime family friend Eaton, and they then together began experimenting with their new found fascination.

"So it started out with just a couple of months of us brewing in Wilbur's parents' office," Eaton said. "Lockdown put a bit of a hold on things, but then as we started to get more serious we started creating products that we thought were really good, and it's been a learning curve ever since."

Now marketing their first final product, the friends produce what they believe to be something special.

Eaton said showing New Zealanders that mead and honey can be used for something different, was a key part of what drove them.

"We aren't trying to make another 10-pack that's there to be binged on and just to be drunk. It's a mead first and we want to show that, we really want to bring something different to the table."

Filled with rules and regulations, Morrison said alcohol and craft RTDs was an industry that towered high at first.

"It's definitely intimidating. There was a lot of nights sitting on computers and reading Government documents but I think you get your head around it in the end."

However, Eaton said the sense of community amongst the craft market is strong, and competitors aren't afraid to lend a helping hand.

"We've been in contact with a lot of helpful people in the brewing industry and found a lot of mentors that have been a massive part of getting us to where we are."

Auckland University School of Chemical Sciences senior lecturer Lisa Pilkington, is researching honey mead and said The Buzz Club's product is just what we need.

"When I talk to people about mead, it's definitely not a super fashionable drink so there's a wide open market for it to be reinvented," she said.

"It's really taking something that's traditional and turning it into a lifestyle, 21st century product and really in tune with the trends."

Pilkington said mead enables a special position in a booming industry.

"You've seen the recent growth of the craft beer industry and now the movement towards lifestyle drinks and RTDs, so I think this a very new and unique take and there's definitely not anything like it on the market. I think it will be very popular."

The Buzz Club has begun distributing throughout areas of Christchurch, and aims to fill shelves throughout the country during the New Year.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/kiwi-uni-students-create-a-buzz-in-the-market-with-mead-rtds/SLEX7UD4I64LJ76QAHUF2RALXM/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatcha Brewing, Honey?

 From porchdrinking.com

While it has been used for thousands of years in brewing, honey is an up and coming star of the craft beer world. Brewers are becoming more aware of the myriad possibilities it presents. Honey provides multiple potential contributions to beer depending on how and when it’s used in the brewing process and has a dizzying range of flavors. Factors such as terroir, the botanicals visited by the bees, and even the time of year the pollen was gathered all affect flavour. So what exactly does honey do for beer, and why do breweries use it?

Honey, the Most Ancient of Fermentables

The main reason honey has been used in beer throughout history is because it’s a fermentable sugar. Honey contains approximately 40 percent fructose and 30 percent glucose, along with traces of other less fermentable sugars. Mead, arguably the world’s oldest alcoholic beverage, is a type of wine made today primarily, or solely, from honey. Historically, though, honey was mixed in with fruit, malted grain and any other flavoring or fermentable ingredient to make what was essentially a barley wine.

Getting enough sugar from malted grains to ferment into beer takes a good amount of human intervention. For honey, the bees have done all the work for us. Sugar (about 50/50 fructose and glucose) is also used in beer by some brewers as an affordable method for boosting ABV (alcohol by volume) while also drying out the mouthfeel. The advantage of using honey is that it often leaves some residual sweetness and aroma behind due to sugars it contains that are too complex to fully ferment.

The Vast World of Honey Flavors

The geographical region and temperate climate where pollen is gathered by bees and the type of botanicals they visit all play a role in what type of honey is produced. For example, honey produced from wildflowers such as clover tends to be very light and delicate; honey gathered from buckwheat produces a dark honey with a molasses-like flavor and consistency. Humid locales also produces a more moist honey than arid environments.

If you really want to get an idea as to the many flavours of honey, check out this Honey Varietal Guide from the National Honey Board that is used by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), or check out this Honey Flavor Wheel produced by UC Davis. Overwhelmed by the range of possible flavours? When tasting honey, honey sommelier Alison Conklin of the National Honey Board suggested in a recent media presentation breaking your reaction down to the 4 Fs: “floral, fruity, funky or a favorite that you cannot put your finger on.”

Photo by Pikist

How to Bee a Good Brewer

After choosing the type of honey, brewers have to decide exactly how and when to add it to the beer. Honey is full of acids, minerals, vitamins, yeasts, bacteria and enzymes. These can all potentially help or harm a beer. Pasteurizing honey by adding it during the “hot side” of brewing (boil through flameout) can kill any wild yeast or bacteria, but it can also reduce or eliminate the honey’s delicate aroma. Some brewers choose to add it to the “cool side” after cooling down the wort to fermentation temperature. Although there is a chance wild yeast and bacteria can cause off flavors in a “cool” fermentation, many brewers and mead makers think it’s worth the minimal risk.

One final use for honey in beer is bottle-conditioning, to provide natural carbonation. In order to provide a shelf-stable product, most commercial brewers force carbonate with CO2 before bottling or canning. Some brewers prefer to carbonate their beers as close to how Mother Nature intended. Breweries that employ natural carbonation of their beers through honey include The Ale Apothecary and Cellador Ales. Paul Arney of The Ale Apothecary employs 100% natural carbonation in all of his beers. Sometimes fruit juice is used for this process, but it’s often honey. Kevin Osborne of Cellador Ales told us in an email that “it felt like a shame to add sucrose to a product that we tried hard to source the best malt, hops, barrels, and fruit for.” He also feels that honey “leaves the perception of sweetness or fulness in the finished project even after all the sugar is fermented out."

https://www.porchdrinking.com/articles/2020/12/21/whatcha-brewing-honey/ 

Christmas pudding and mead, perfect together

 From yadkinripple.com

By Bill Colvard

It’s a shame that the tradition of a Christmas Pudding never quite caught on in the United States. It’s not that Americans aren’t aware of Christmas pudding, or plum pudding, as it’s sometimes called. We’ve all seen Dickens “A Christmas Carol” way too many times for that. But still, a lot of us have never eaten one. And that’s unfortunate.

Christmas puddings have been around at least since the Middle Ages when they were boiled in cloth bags, and there are as many recipes as there are families who make them, but two elements never change: dried fruit and plenty of alcohol. Currants, raisins and prunes are the most usual dried fruit. In fact, the name plum pudding comes from raisins, which were called plums in pre-Victorian England. Port, sherry, mulled wine, rum and brandy are the most common forms of alcohol used in Christmas puddings, but it is really surprising that mead, which is just as “Merry Olde England” as Christmas pudding itself, is rarely used. That, too, is unfortunate.

Besides the history of Christmas pudding and mead being so compatible, the taste is not merely compatible, it’s a marriage made in heaven.

Mead, which in its purest form is honey and water fermented into a beverage that is essentially honey wine, predates medieval times. It is often claimed to be the first form of alcohol known to humans. Sometimes, fruit, spices or herbs are added to create varying flavours.

Windsor Run Cellars in Hamptonville makes several meads, and their “Honey Moon” golden mead, according to their website, “offers the lingering richness of sweet wild flower honey, warmed by the addition of our very own hand crafted liquor.” The description is accurate, and Honey Moon’s flavor profile is perfect for Christmas pudding.

Windsor Run is a distillery as well as a winery, and also offers a distilled spirit made from honey. Called “Killer Bee,” it is not only a distilled spirit made from honey, but a distilled spirit made from the honey of “Africanised” killer bees.

Again according to Windsor Run’s website, Killer Bee is “… a quite smooth liquor, bearing a distinct honey aroma, and a subtle honey flavor, which is altogether pleasant by itself in a glass or snifter, while remaining an interesting and highly flexible mixing option.”

It turns out one of those mixing options is Christmas pudding. Soaking the dried fruits destined for a Christmas pudding in Windsor Run’s Honey Moon golden mead and then dousing the finished pudding with Killer Bee for a glorious flambé has all the components of a spectacular finale to your Christmas dinner.

Since the late Victorian period, it has been customary to prepare Christmas pudding on the Sunday prior to the beginning of Advent, which is four or five weeks before Christmas.

The prayer for that Sunday in the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer (as it was used from the 16th century, and still is in traditional churches), reads like this:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

It must have seemed to Victorians that the church itself was commanding them to “stir up” a pudding. The Sunday before Advent is still known as “Stir Up Sunday.”

Everyone in the family, especially the children, should give the pudding a stir to bring good luck in the following year, preferably stirring from East to West, in honor of the direction in which the Magi will soon be traveling.

It’s also customary to insert a sixpence into the pudding, and the lucky recipient of the coin when the pudding is served, can expect to be “plenteously rewarded” in the coming year. Hopefully, that reward will be substantial enough to repair any dental damage resulting from chomping into a sixpence. Other tokens are also known to have been included in Christmas puddings, such as a tiny wishbone (to bring good luck), a silver thimble (for thrift), or an anchor (to symbolize safe harbor.) This tradition is totally optional. If you have any qualms about extraneous coinage, Monopoly tokens or poultry bones threatening the lives of your family, by all means, leave them out.

Unlike cooks in the United Kingdom and countries which formerly comprised the British Empire, you may not have a pudding basin. You’ll need one. Since only the upper classes had ovens back in the day, Christmas puddings are steamed in a pot of boiling water on top of the stove. The steaming requires many hours, and you need a vessel capable of handling that.

You can buy one, but if you order it online, give it plenty of time to be delivered. It’s probably traveling a good distance. Historically, pudding basins were ceramic or metal, but are now sometimes plastic. The plastic ones have the advantage of coming with a tight-fitting lid which simplifies steaming and storage. But for an American who has never experienced cooking something on the stove-top in a plastic container, it is a harrowing five hours of constant worry that one’s glorious pudding is, at any moment, collapsing into a puddle of molten plastic. Ceramic vessels are less expensive but require a somewhat complex structure of parchment paper, foil and kitchen string to cover the basin, make it airtight, and lift it out of the boiling water. There are plenty of YouTube videos that explain the process. It’s difficult to explain, but once you’ve seen it, it’s easy to do.

You may already have a vessel that can be appropriated for steaming your pudding. A stoneware or Pyrex bowl of the proper size and shape could easily do the trick. Do NOT attempt to use a plastic bowl that wasn’t expressly made for the purpose because it obviously will not possesses the Christmas magic to defy the laws of physics and melting points. Even with a purchased plastic pudding basin, place it on a saucer or a steamer insert or something to keep it from touching the bottom of your pot during steaming. Even Christmas magic needs a little help.

When the big day comes, decorate your Christmas pudding with a sprig of holly, just like Mrs. Cratchit did in “A Christmas Carol.” Mrs. Cratchit was surprisingly nonchalant about strolling to the dinner table bearing a flaming pudding doused in accelerant, considering the prevalence of tenement fires in Victorian England. You should perhaps be more careful. Be especially careful of dangly sleeves and long, flowy hair.

There’s going to be plenty of drama without setting yourself or your house on fire. And if you really love your guests, offer them a glass of “Honey Moon” mead as a dessert wine.

Christmas Pudding

Serves 8-10

1-¼ cups currants

1 cup golden raisins

1 cup roughly chopped pitted prunes

¾ cup Windsor Run Cellars Honey Moon Mead

⅔ cup all-purpose flour

2-⅓ cups fresh breadcrumbs

14 tbsp. coarsely grated lard or vegetable shortening (freeze overnight to make it easier to grate. Beef suet is traditionally used and can be ordered online, but like a pudding basin, takes a long time for delivery. Do not use butter. The melting point is too low.)

¾ cup dark brown sugar

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

¼ tsp. ground cloves

1 tsp. baking powder

grated zest of 1 lemon

3 large eggs

1 medium apple (peeled and grated)

2 tbsp. honey

½ cup Windsor Run Killer Bee Distilled Spirits (to flame the pudding)

Directions

You will need a 1.7 litre/3 pint/1-½ quart heatproof pudding basin, and also a sprig of holly to decorate.

Put the currants, golden raisins and scissored pitted prunes into a bowl with the Mead, swill the bowl a bit, then cover with plastic wrap and leave to steep overnight or for up to a week.

When the fruits have had their steeping time, put a large pan of water on to boil, and prepare your pudding basin for steaming.

In a large mixing bowl, combine all the remaining pudding ingredients (except the Killer Bee Spirits.)

Add the steeped fruits, scraping in all the Mead with a rubber spatula, and mix to combine thoroughly, then fold in coins or charms if using.

Scrape and press the mixture into the prepared pudding basin, squish it down and put on the lid if you have one. Otherwise do the foil and parchment paper origami explained above. Place in the pot of boiling water with the water coming halfway up the basin and steam for 5 hours, checking every now and again that the water hasn’t boiled down too much. Once an hour is probably good.

When it has steamed for 5 hours, remove carefully and, when manageable, unwrap the foil. If you have a tight-fitting lid, put it on. If not, use foil to seal up the pudding as airtight as possible. Store in a cool, dark place until Christmas Day. Every week or so, splash a bit of Killer Bee Spirits over the top and seal it back up. You don’t want the pudding to dry out. As long as it stays moist with liquor, it won’t spoil.

On Christmas Day, steam again, this time for 3 hours.

To serve, remove from the steaming pot, take off the lid or covering, put a plate on top, turn it upside down. Then remove the basin – and you’re almost there.

Put the sprig of holly on top of the pudding, then heat the Killer Bee Spirits in a small pan, and the minute it’s hot, but before it boils – you don’t want the alcohol to burn off before you attempt to flambé it — pour the hot Killer Bee Spirits over the pudding. Now light the pudding, preferably with a long kitchen match. Remove the holly before flaming if it makes you nervous. A healthy respect for fire and liquor’s properties as an accelerant is a good thing.

Traditionally served with Hard Sauce, which you can easily make while the pudding is steaming, but you may prefer whipped cream (use some Mead instead of vanilla extract) or ice cream.

Make ahead: Make the Christmas pudding up to 6 weeks ahead. Keep in a cool, dark place, periodically dousing with a bit of Killer Bee. Then proceed as per the recipe on Christmas Day.

Freeze ahead: Make and freeze the Christmas pudding for up to 1 year ahead. Thaw overnight at room temperature and proceed as per the recipe on Christmas Day.

Hard Sauce

¼ pound butter (1 stick), at room temperature

6 to 8 tbsp. confectioners’ sugar

2 tbsp. (or more, to taste) Killer Bee Spirits

Cream the butter and sugar together thoroughly. Beat in the spirit, a little at a time, until the mixture is quite smooth. Serve by spoonfuls over individual slices of pudding.

https://www.yadkinripple.com/features/lifestyle/18544/christmas-pudding-and-mead-perfect-together 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Brew Your Own Mead at Home

From greenmatters.com

Mead, otherwise known as honey wine, is one of the more popular alcohols favored by home brewers in recent years. Its novelty in today’s culture is juxtaposed, and perhaps even underscored, by the fact that it can be traced back to the time of the Vikings, around 8,000 years ago But the secrets to brewing this lost libation are no real mystery. In fact, the recipe for mead has been studied and utilized by amateur methiers (brewers of mead) for centuries. and now you too can make mead in your own home. 

What is mead?

Mead is one of the oldest fermented beverages on Earth. There is evidence that it was brewed as early as 15,000 BC, during the time of the Vikings. Back then, they drank mead from cow horns and goblets, usually as an alternative to water which, lacking the heat and antibacterial qualities gained by mead’s fermentation process, was actually much less safe to drink back then. Mead was also made in Ancient Greece, where it was known as “the drink of the gods.”

Unlike wine, which is made from fermented grapes, mead is made from fermented honey. Modern home brewers and winemakers have rediscovered the secrets to brewing this ancient beverage and have begun experimenting with it using all manner of ingredients. New styles, trends, and creative approaches have given rise to mead’s renewed popularity. 

How to make mead

Home mead-making requires a number of ingredients and tools that will help aid in the process. There are many mead kids available on the market, many of which you can buy through reputable online sources like homebrewing.org. The bulk of what comes in these kits includes, a large plastic pail, glass carboys, a big pot, and a mead-making book. 

Like all forays into home brewing, a pre-made kit may be the best way to get started. Then, once you learn the ropes, you can alter the process, ingredients, and brewing time to suit any number of different permutations. 

Find the best possible ingredients

The first step in the process is to gather your ingredients, namely honey, which you will want to get from reputable sources. Like most home-brewed alcohols, mead does not require any sort of complex ingredients, not at the start anyway. All you will need is water, yeast, and honey. That’s all. 

Different kinds of honey will provide different depths and degrees of honey flavor, though much of that will also depend on the brewing process itself. Regardless of what type of honey you use, it’s always best to look for honey from local or sustainable sources. The fresher and more natural the product is, the more refined and nuanced the end-result will be. 

Sanitize everything

Keeping errant bacteria away from your brew is essential to creating the right type of fermentation in your mead. The smallest speck of the wrong bacteria can ruin an entire batch of mead, wasting time and potentially expensive ingredients. Make sure all your tools and vessels have been completely sanitized by either boiling them in hot water or washing them with a special wine-making sanitizer.

Boil the brew

According to the folks on Brew Your Own, making a 6 gallon batch of mead begins as follows: First, boil 1.5 gallons of water in a large pot and then add about 1.5 gallons of honey to it once it's off the stove. There are different schools of thought as to when this honey should be added, however. Some say that it can be added while the pot is boiling, while others argue that doing this wipes out all the floral accents in the honey. If you’ve bought a specific type of honey because you like those accents, it would be best to preserve them by adding the honey once it’s off the stove.

Fruit or herbs can be used at this point to further flavour the honey, though most methiers agree that creative additions should be saved for the second batch. That way, you don’t run the risk of over spicing or over flavoring your first batch. Remember, basics first, experimentation later. 

Cool it down

Once your honey is mixed in, add three more gallons of cool water to the pot. This can be either filtered or spring, just don’t use regular tap water that has chlorine in it. Any unwelcome chemicals might foul the process. Take the liquid’s temperature and once it measures between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit, add the yeast. According to the gathered brewers on GotMead.com, temperature ensures the perfect temperature to keep the yeast alive and healthy. Then, pour the mead into your pail or glass jug.

Source: iStock

Measuring alcohol

Many mead kits will come equipped with a hydrometer, which you will use at this point to measure the alcohol content of your brew. Once you have measured and mixed it, seal the top of the plastic pail or glass jug with an airlock top. Most kits will come with this type of top as well because it ensures that some air escapes during the fermenting process. Within the next 24 hours, the fermenting will begin. 

Low and slow fermentation

Mead’s first ferment takes about a month, at which time you can begin the process of siphoning the brew off and into a secondary container. This process, also known as “racking,” leaves most of the fermented sediment on the bottom of the first container. Cover the second container with another airlock and let the mead sit for another month. You can let it go longer if you want to deepen the flavor. Once it’s ready, feel free to siphon it into bottles and cork them.

https://www.greenmatters.com/p/how-to-make-mead