Bochet honey spirit/brandy

[bcboyz86]

Yea, I might get some honey from a local guy for about $70 for 36lbs... Still kinda pricey, but I'll take it I suppose. The wifes grandma said its the best honey she's ever had in her life....and she's pretty old. So I'm betting it should be good. And put good in, get better out... Hopefully that's the case this time but I do agree with the seemingly endless area we have to farm(especially where I live in Washington) that stuff would be cheaper. You can drive 2hrs in every direction and still be in the middle of some sort food field.... Oh well, good things cost more and are usually better with time.

[Craisogaenus]

Well I'm going to start buying in bulk (200kg) of different sorts of honey at a cost of 1-1.8 US dollars per kg, to try and cut the price down, and as honey doesn't go off it's a good investment I feel. Hope your experimenting goes well, if you get any good results do share .

[bcboyz86]

Would it beneifit from mixing the different honeys? Kinda like Apple cider tastes better when its a bunch of different types of apples? If that's true I might get the vast majority of the good country honey about 30min north of here, but also gett a gallon here and there of different kinds and mix it up a bit.

[Craisogaenus]

The way I look at honey is a bit like whiskey, there are many different malts and then you can blend them to get different characters in the end product. The same can be said for honeys, if you mix you'll get different hints from different types. If you're going for a bochet mead then I wouldn't bother trying to get flavours from weak honeys such as balsam because the caramel flavour will just override it, but strong scented/tasting honeys will be a better choice. Also for specialty honeys such as heather, orange blossom, lime etc I wouldn't boil them as you're likely to lose the characters you bought them for, instead mix caramelised cheap with raw specialty honey for your ferment .

[Jimbo]

If you like honey based spirits I recommend considering getting a hive or 2 and raising bees. Theyre relatively easy to take care of and are VERY prolific. each hive will produce 80-130 lbs of harvested honey. I started raising bees a few years ago and its been a lot of fun.

Here's a website that is my goto for what to do when, and solid knowledge source. Might wet your curiosity on raising bees. Great writeups and info in general, the dunderhead of the bee world if you will http://pinkpages.chrisbacherconsulting.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

[Craisogaenus]

Yeah by the sounds of it it might be cheaper in the US doing that but over here it's more expensive keeping the bees!!! It's ridiculous. Obviously for health benefits raw honey is the best, and tastes so good coming out of the extractor.

[bcboyz86]

Well I currently live in a dense neighborhood of "uppity Ups" and its nice to have my neighbors no hate me for keeping bees in the middle of a town full of kids :/ so I think currently the headache isn't worth the extra cost to just go pick up a few gallons down the road. And you said it would produce over 100lbs? Is that a year, or over the life of the hive? Might go be sneeky sneeky and throw a bee hive box on the edge of my moms property in the country she wouldn't ever notice...

[Craisogaenus]

There's plenty of city hives, some people think they have the best honey as they can get access to specimen plants that people grow in their small gardens. And to the amount of honey produced it really depends on how many brood boxes and supers you have a friend of ours can get 180lbs but then he has 3 brood boxes and 6 supers on some of his.

Just distilling guys so i'll release my opinion in a few hours....

[Kiwikeg]

My bees are suburban bees. I always prefered urban hives because of the range of plants they forage over. Most people appriciate the improved harvests from the added pollenation. Also the bees very quickly exhaust the nectar sources closeby there hive and forage further away.
Swarms are harmless and after the first one most people are fascinated. Now varroa has established its ugly diseased face wild bees are gone and I have people begging me to put hives in their nieghbourhood. Which I will only do if they and there nieghbours are sprayfree.
The human race will be f****d if we lose the honeybee as it does upto 80% of all agricultural pollenation. Ie the human race will starve to death.
And 80kg is a average yeild for well managed urban hive over summer.

[Craisogaenus]

Well I'm still on going with the distillation I tell you what, the end product is really good, but the F'''ing mess it has left in the still (not to mention the pipes) is ridiculous, it'll probably disappear with boiling water though.

It looks like the mead was about 7-9% looking at the outcome (should have taken a reading :/).

Kiwi I'm guessing you're from NZ I didn't realise that varroa had spread over there too :O, in the UK and Europe there is a worse one now come over from Asia. And not to reduce support for bees (because they're important) but it isn't as bad as that, I know the professor who is doing most of the work on pollination studies to which he stresses some points to try and get more funding from the lazy governments that have let this happen, over 80% of the worlds produce (biomass not species) is wind pollinated not solicited pollination via insects these consist of your grains and other veg such as carrots, turnips, cabbage etc. Strawberries would suffer more due to the fact of being misshapen as not all of the carpels will be fertilised. Now what is more crucial to save is the diversity of vegetation that we will lose/have less of, as 80% of plants (by species) are pollinated by insects, Also ruminants such as cows won't die either so we'll have them to eat as grasses won't suffer.

I'm going to try it on my friends and see what they think.

[Jimbo]

...the lazy governments that have let this happen,

Get some mite-away strips and youll be varroa free. Obama or Cameron arent gonna come mite away your hives just like their not gonna deflea your dog. Another administration in Washington responsible for mites on bees will be as useless as tits on a bull, just like all the rest of the bullshit administrations in Washington. And they'd be steered by lobbyest from the 80% youre talking about because the 20% from the bee's would be seen as additional 20% profit they could gain if bees were eradicated. Which they'd only be able to do if the health of bee's was the governments responsibility. In fact I wouldnt be surprised to see mite-away strips become illegal. Shit happens all the time. Screw the bullshit corrupt manipulated useless government. The FDA and Big Food Inc (one in the same) are already fucking KILLING us. And why are keeping bee's so expensive in England? Anything to do with the government??? I rest my case, the governments involved, less people have bee's, less bee's in the world. Ya that helps.

[Craisogaenus]

I think you may have taken the wrong edge of things, the reason why it is the governments fault in an island nation is because they shouldn't have allowed for the import of foreign cheaper hives which so happened to be infected with vorroa which thus spread across the UK since, however the Government and its ministers still didn't learn and allowed for even more importation leading to the current crisis in Scotland where they are struggling with a new problem being Nosema Ceranae which has spread from Asia and has caused a dramatic increase in heather prices. The reason why it is so expensive to keep bees in this country is because wood is expensive (especially good cedar) whereas typically everywhere else in the world has able amounts of logging industry, also America has a lot more cheaper too due to fuel being much cheaper. I hope that clarifies your query. And trust me in Britain at least where wages are so high they do not want to see bees go down the drain as the fruit industry would be solely considered a third world occupation. And also it isn't really honey so much pollinating, it is more the humble bumble bees; honey bees are evolutionary designed to retain most of the pollen they collect however bumble bees lose a lot of pollen when brushing past the stigma so are more effective, so much so that they (out of the bees and not the other wild pollinating insects, beetles, or birds) contribute to 70% (of UK pollinations) and vorroa doesn't affect them.

Mite strips aren't 100% effective and will only reduce vorroa numbers, the best weapon that has been suggested (In the EU anyway) is by introducing pseudoscorpions (an arthropod predator of vorroa). I hope this helps.

[Jimbo]

Interesting. Thanks. Never heard of these scorpion things. Simple pine boxes is all anyone uses. Seems cedar would flavor the honey. Even without varroa and nosema we're struggling with CCD, colony collapse disorder. Lots of theories no solution yet.

[Craisogaenus]

Cedar has anti fungal properties, which; firstly increases the service time of your boxes, and secondly helps prevent some diseases associated with rotting hives. We have pine ones too which are much cheaper but still far more expensive than in the states or mainland Europe. :/

You should check them out they are really cool, unless you have arachnophobia . Yeah CCD is a strange one but it seems to be more of a syndrome rather than a particular disease/parasite so it is a number of things that put pressure on a hive in which it will eventually collapse when all the problems summate beyond the colony's ability to restore itself and/or survive. That's the main line of thought I've been introduced to but, if you've heard any other reasons they please share as it's a problem I think we are all going to see more of.

[Craisogaenus]

We also made on out of Plywood too.

[bcboyz86]

So if I was say, in Washington state on the east side, how would I go abouts getting a honey hive? Is it as easy as online ordering? And what do I do over the winter? It gets pretty cold here during the winter (-10) do the bees need special homes during the winter?

[Craisogaenus]

Bees that live in cold areas will have to hibernate for the winter months (also period most likely to be attacked by rodents too), as long as you build/buy a decent hive they should be okay if they are in a sheltered spot, some people put thermal jackets (do not however block up any important holes, one because the bees need oxygen and two because they may over heat or retain too much moisture which can lead to disease and degradation of the box. My advice is to go on a bee keeping course first or at least join a free bee society if there is one in your area as you'll learn more through practice than ever being told online. Also that way you can make friends which might have spare equipment or be able to use someone else's extractor (which are quite expensive). Over in the USA another reason possibly for such terrible cases of CCD is that a lot of major commercial bee keepers never let their bees hibernate properly as they'll transport them numerous times in trucks from north to south cline to follow the opening of certain flowers, this stresses the bees too much.

[Jimbo]

So if I was say, in Washington state on the east side, how would I go abouts getting a honey hive? Is it as easy as online ordering? And what do I do over the winter? It gets pretty cold here during the winter (-10) do the bees need special homes during the winter?

You would need to find a bee keeper or bee source and drive there to pick up an established hive. Thats the best way to get started. You could also buy a 'nuc', which is 5 frames, bees, laying queen, and some honey and pollen. You put that in a brood box with some more frames and youre off. Or you could buy a package bees, thats more work, you can read about it online. Its a few thousand bees or so and a queen in a little carrier. You shake the bees into a brood box and put the queen cage in and they free her in a couple days. In this case she's not laying yet and there's no food stores so you need to feed them for a bit.

Nothing special to do in the cold, they ball up inside the hive to say warm. They dont hibernate, they ballup and shake to generate heat, and keep the inside of the hive in the 90's F. They rotate positions on the ball so the outside ones get a warm spell, and they eat their honey stores for fuel to generate the heat. It gets colder than -10 here. Sometimes I wrap some bubble wrap around the hive when its really cold to make it easier on them. But like C says dont block the bottom or top opening or moisture will accumulate inside the hive and it will rain on them and mold up. Happened to a friend this winter, he forgot to crack the top cover for airflow and it got wet, molded up inside and the hive died. On particularly warm days in winter you'll see them come outside for a quick flight to go to the bathroom (they dont go inside their hive). Can you imagine holding it all winter?

Read up on the link I posted below. George Imirie was an amazing bee resource and there's lots to learn from reading his short posts.

[Fuk]

This sight gets better and better i get on here to learn about making booze and now i'm thinking about raising bee's! thanx much

thiss probably an easily reserched newbie Q but as long as i'm giving you props on the thread i'd thought i'd mention I'm curious if cutting brandy is like whiskey (an amazing art and the palate of those who do it is inconcievable to me) where you'll use certain tails and shit to contribute to the complex flavor or do you just cut out the hearts in your first run and being the first run they maintain many of the flavors of the mead?
also i to might be in east washington state and was wondering if there are any laws against beekeeping in the city

again i posted this w/ the intent of giving you props on a bad-ass super intriguing thread the questions are probably way easily researched so don't put yourself out answering them, If i get curious enough i'll do the work my self i just thought someone might enjoy throwing in a response to em

[Jimbo]

Cutting Brandy is something I been doing for a lot more years than whiskey. So Ill tell you how I do both haha and you can decide which part, if any, sounds worth a shit

Brandy I do in a single run, from 12 gallons I pull out 12-16 oz of fores and it goes in the workshop as solvent. From there I keep the heads, apple bomb, and straight through the hearts, then I start tasting off the end of the condenser. You can tell when things start going south, but at the same time, some of that is interesting too, and Ive found contributes to the flavor after the whole shootin match is aged on oak for a while. So I keep some of the tails, until that 'wet cardboard' thing starts to show. From that point I switch to the feints jug for next run. In general apple brandy cuts are good a lot wider than whiskey.

Whiskey. I dont trust my whiskey cutting skills yet so I do my run into jars, and the next day I scratch my head, and ass, while I taste back and forth through the jars until Im either satisfied I know what to keep, or completely shitfaced out of my gourd. Whichever comes first. Also whiskey I do 2 runs, never been happy with a single run like I am with brandy and rum, so the tasting process involves a wine thief and glass of clean good water to splash in the tasting glass, else you'll burn the living hell out of your tastebuds and have no idea what the hell is going on.

Bee's: People keep bees in cities, on rooftops and such. Check your ordinance it might be ok. They really are very docile and harmless. I dont use any of the garb when I work with them, just work slow and dont bang the hive, they're not fond of being pounded on, prolly interpreted as a predator trying to get in. A few will walk on me, rarely get stung.

[Fuk]

I admire your faith in your palate, i'd prolly just second guess my self too damn much to take on something like that, at least right now. i'd spend so much time resmelling and retasting that one of two things would happen
a. i'd wake up with a few broken jars and no clothes on
or b. maybe i'd use that liquid confidence to finnally trust my cuts and wake up with a bomb ass jar of ready to be aged whiskey... and no clothes on

i run a sugar wash and aim for high proof neutral, which i consider more of a science than an art. your aiming cut cut out as much off taste as you can not selecting subtle flavor's and aroma's that'll complement one another in your final product (which do to the aging process you wouldn't even be able to completely confirm after you mix'd em)
it does suprise me that you feel your brandy heads complement the taste i'm not saying your wrong all i've ever done was sugar washes. i just thought even with whiskey you aim to cut out the heads and that super increadible palate comes in when you choose tails to mix in (i'm prolly wrong it's been a long time since i've researched the subject). and i know sugar wash heads are gross, i taste em every time i trade sips with some amateur at a festival (yes i know i'm an ameteur but i don't know any good moonshiners and my potstill charcoal filtered high proof neutral is the better than anything i've ever drank including everclear imo)
EDIT:i'm not advising anyone drink anything that high of proof it's damn dangerous but it is my preferred way to ingest ethanol (with alot of chaser),if it is against the rules or is a safety hazzard to mention my style please let me know and i'll edit it out. I just plain don't enjoy the taste of drinking enough to get drunk, which i like to do. the first few drinks of a cold beer or bomb mixdrink are fine but it gets gross to me if i consume ANYTHING at the rate it takes to get me there so untill i find that magical elixer (which some of you are probably brewing now) that tastes good enough for me to want to keep drinking,(or until i force myself to aquire an aquired taste to it)i prefer to get the drink over with as little consumption as possible then enjoy my non-alcoholic chaser AGAIN I AM NOT ADVISING ANYONE DO AS I DO IT CAN KILL YOU AND IT'LL TELL YOU THAT EVERYWHERE ON THIS VERY WELL INFORMED WEBSITE HERE, it's just my style and if stating that fact offends anyone here in anyway i will gladly erase any evidence of such :EDIT
i rent from an asshole landlord at the moment and i know that beeking wouldn't fly but i will check it out i'm way interested in the subject

-thanx much for the response

[Jimbo]

I admire your faith in your palate, i'd prolly just second guess my self too damn much to take on something like that,

Took me a long time before I trusted my palate. After almost 20 years of apple brandy making I can tell what I'm gonna get after aging in oak by tasting the apple cider as Im pressing it.

a. i'd wake up with a few broken jars and no clothes on
or b. maybe i'd use that liquid confidence to finnally trust my cuts and wake up with a bomb ass jar of ready to be aged whiskey... and no clothes on

HAHAHAHAHA Thats some funny shit.

i run a sugar wash and aim for high proof neutral

Sorry to hear that Seriously tho, if youre gonna spend the time to do this, make the best shit you possibly can. Unless of course Neutral is your thing, then just tell me to STFU and move on. HAHA

it does suprise me that you feel your brandy heads complement the taste i'm not saying your wrong all i've ever done was sugar washes. i just thought even with whiskey you aim to cut out the heads and that super increadible palate comes in when you choose tails to mix in (i'm prolly wrong it's been a long time since i've researched the subject).

Nobodys taste buds are wrong. Learn to trust your taste buds and nothing anybody else says matters much, its all opinions, and opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. If you think heads suck in sugarheads then byGod heads prolly suck in sugar heads. Cant say, I dont make 'em.

-thanx much for the response

Its my pleasure. Happy 'stillin and stay safe.

[Fuk]

definatly good typin with ya

fyi: high proof neutrals are my thing right now but dont go stfu(whatever that means i'm not a computer person) because i have a feeling that will change someday when i taste some expertly crafted concoction

[Jimbo]

stfu = shut the fuck up

yes, I think you should go spring for some $45 top shelf bourbon and whiskeys and see if it doesnt get ya. You might decide a properly prepared ethanol beverage doesnt need to be everclear and flavoring bullshit. And you'll realize you can make that $45 bottle of whiskey for about $3 by paying attention to what the good folk here on HD have to teach ya.

Cheers Fuk.

[Craisogaenus]

Yeah Jim is right bees are usually docile we quite often go in without gloves and sometimes without suits (do not do until you know your bees), you can get bad breeding though one year that can make them slightly more aggressive, try and get an Hawaiian strain they are a good one to start with.
And again Jim is right where it comes to tastes and opinions, at the end of the day if you like it and it hasn't got dangerous levels of anything then it doesn't matter (that's why I do it so I can get knew tasting stuff). If you want an easy whiskey to start with then go for oat whiskey, it's harder to ferment but it comes out smoother more readily.

And a note just on the hibernation of bees; over in the UK we call the state of the hive by what the queen is doing, and all queens hibernate, the rest of the hive only stays half awake to keep her warm and fed (a lot of animals that enter torpor drop out for a second to feed). This happens in even tropical, eusocial/semi-social, and stingless bees species.

And yeah as Jim said listen to the experience, what I did was read the threads posted by the ''master distillers'' on here first before trying anything just to see different peoples angles on the same topic. And thanks guys for contributing to the thread so much. If you guys have any novel recipes then you should check out http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=37672

[goose eye]

you get 2 bee keepers together an you gonna get 3 opinions. yall be careful goin in a hive without bein suited up. mite of been stung
1000s of time but the next one mite be the one that puts you in shock. as far as pure strains. unless you the only one with bees within
3 miles or so - even if you satuate your dca with a noed strain or you requeenin with a pure strain every year you gonna get muts. all
it takes is a swarm setin up in a tree an there you have your droans.

over here we call it clusterin in winter. bees beat there wings to keep the cluster a constant temp after a while the ones on outside of cluster rotate in an they keep it up all winter. that cluster is constantly movein so they burnin up a fair amount of honey. that cluster is movein to. cluster can start out in the boton deep an in spring can be in the top deep cause they used up all the honey in the botom.
so you get bees dont rob em to heavy

so im tole

[Jimbo]

Goose! There's a poster I always enjoy reading. haha yes, 2 beeks, 3 opinions, like anythign right 'clustering' thats the word I was looking for, thanks!

I get stung on occasion. Usually when I do something stupid like pinch one by accident or one crawls in my shirt and cant get out and panics. The occasional stings never bothered me much, didnt know an allergic reaction can develop or happen even when there wasnt a problem before. Thats not good!

Truth about no control over the strain. When a new queen goes on her mating flight, she'll horse around with 10 or more drones in the wild. You have no idea who or where those drones are from. I definitely notice different hives have different personalities, based I'm sure on the nature of the drones the queen dorks around with.

Here's a shot of one of my bees on one of my apple tree's. Life is good.

[Jimbo]

Oh swarms are fun too, swarming is how bee's multiply and proliferate in the wild. If you're lucky enough to catch one you get a free hive out of the deal. Here's a swarm from one of my hives that I caught after work one day, hence the work clothes, and plopped into a new brood box. There's a queen in the middle of that herd. Sorry for the smiley face, I dont need pictures of myself on a distilllin site haha Cheers.

[Craisogaenus]

Haha funny pic my uncle has caught one on his beard before but then hes crazy and has a beard like Gimli for them to hang on to. I don't know what the system is over in the US but we paint our queens a different colour for each year, so by that you can see if someone is giving you an old queen or not; always try to get newbies as they are healthier and some studies have found some hive diseases being positively correlated with old queens due to hormone imbalances.

[bcboyz86]

Wow, I didn't really expect it to be around $600 for a bunch of bees, a queen, and some boxes to keep them in... But I suppose at $30 a gallon of honey, and if it produces 8+gallons a year it would pay itself off in about 2-3 years. I'm just really hesitent of starting a bee colony in the middle of a neighborhood for of small kids I can just see the first parent coming pounding on my door because their kid is allergic and I have a few thousand in my backyard.... But yea, the vigitation and flowers would most likely really benefit from the added pollen spreading...