# Crystallized honey for mead?



## woodsy

You should heat the honey enough so it is fluid and will dissolve
in water easily. 
There is a recipe here for mead 
with bread yeast called JAOM, Joes ancient orange mead. 
With bread yeast you need to mask the taste of that yeast with other
flavors. good luck you need to adjust the recipe for your 5 gal batch.


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## the doc

Just use warm water to dissolve the crystallized honey. It works great for mead!


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## Vance G

Only warm the water a little and dissolve the honey. Boiling honey is no longer necessary or recommended. Now if you want darkened burned honey in your mead, just use your melter honey! I have a chokecherry bochetomel that is fantastic. Actually there is no need to even worry about the crystals dissolving. It will just happen In the mix or the yeast will nibble at the edges until it is used up. Enjoy your mead and remember it gets better with age, especially highly alcoholic recipes. I have some over four years old and it just keeps getting better.


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## Ben Brewcat

+1 on warm and dissolve. I wouldn't use bread yeast for mead personally, bread mead has been selected and bred to produce CO2 while mead, wine or beer yeast has been bred to taste good .


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## Tenbears

A warm dissolve expedites things and gives a more consistent ferment. Before making a sweet mead you need to decide how you want to do that. One can stop a ferment leaving residual sugar, or back sweeten. If choosing the former it is imperative that you select a yeast with tolerances that will match your ferment. Not all yeasts clean themselves up well and can produce off flavors, not all yeasts will cease activity at your desired alcohol content. if you have to stop the yeast yourself you will have to be sure to do so at the correct time and do so thoroughly to ensure it does not begin again. 
Back sweetening requires less experience, and is fare more reliable for a beginner. Plus it gives the opportunity to use different varietal honey to create different styles of mead. 

In any event It is always best to use wine yeast for making mead. Bread yeast are just that Bread yeast, they will work. However, their effectiveness is unpredictable, and they can produce off flavors. 

if you would like I have a fairly straight forward mead that requires little extras and produces a nice mead. You can add to it with oaking, or spices etc. but it makes a nice traditional mead by itself. contact me and I will give you one that I like.


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