Modern Vespa

Today I went to buy some honey (5 kg) from my neighbor, as well as being a farmer he produces various types of honey: a thousand flowers, eucalyptus, chestnut and some others ... It depends on where he placed the hives. Price per kilogram: € 11 for eucalyptus and € 10 for the thousand flowers.
I use it in my diet instead of sugar.

www.ilmieledigialas.it

If you really want to cut down on the sugar...
Take that honey, put in a carboy, throw in three oranges and some spice, add a hand full of raisins, fill to around 12L and chuck in some bread yeast. Magically in about 6 months you'll have very little sugar left.

It will explode sooner due to the chemical reactions!
Oh sorry, I forgot that in the opposite hemisphere to mine things are going the other way around and maybe it won't explode.

It won't explode with a proper airlock in place. It will make mead.

Ahm yes ... this I had not considered ...
You are talking about a real distiller and not a barrel with copper pipes and a wood fire lit underneath ...
In fact, mead is one of those fermented liquids that are not usually considered.
But yes ... there are probably still those who taste it, a little like some Americans like homemade moonshine (I think it's called that) and in Italy they produce home-made grappa (water-vine) distilled from pomace of grapes.
Before they removed my pancreas, I also liked spirits but only to add them to ice cream; my favorite was the "Passito of the island of Pantelleria" or the "Malvasia of the Lipari islands" which are liqueur wines, like Porto but finer and more fragrant.
My grandmother made me small round cakes drowned in melted honey and sprinkled with vanilla sugar grains ... yum!
Always using sweet dough and honey, my mother prepares a small bread filled with almonds (strictly Sicilian almonds! ) and after having removed it from the oven she brushes it with vanilla.
Can you smell the perfume?

Umm, I could be wrong, but I think there's no distillation in mead, is there?

I checked, it's just a passive fermentation product; the bit of heat that is produced is given by a chemical reaction and I quote:
"Once the honey must is prepared, by adding water, the yeasts and other microorganisms find themselves in an ideal environment to live and, in the specific case of yeasts, there is a breathing phase and an anaerobic fermentation phase , where they consume glucose and convert it into alcohol and carbon dioxide, producing heat. "

Ahh, mead!
Mead was a hobby for me when honey was cheap. My specialty was made of orange blossom honey, ginger and raspberries, bottled with enough sugar to carbonate in the bottle. It was very popular with Champagne fans. I used Pasteur dry and liquid yeasts to avoid lactobacillus infection and for dryness. It's a shame most commercial mead is sold un-aged.

I also made colonche from cactus fruit, which was tasty.

I get carried away.....

When it comes to eating and drinking, we all agree, huh?

Back to plain 'ol honey.... I love finding honey on my travels from different sources. It's not the most practical souvenir, but hey, it's cheap enough. Last time I was in Mexico I found some honey in the mercado. I swear it was sorghum.

Continue…

A friend was moving and he offered me a bunch of garage junk to pick through, including a case of rusting Grolsch bottles he filled with sweet mead 10 years ago. They contained the best thing I ever drank. Much like an aged port.
Sweet mead is easy to make and takes patience to reach maturity.
Dry carbonated mead can be ready in a few months.

I've made many batches of beer, but mead stole the show.

I've never had mead, but it's on my shortlist of things to try.

Mead,

I thought I had drank every thing that contains alcohol. I don't recall
drinking mead. I think I mistakenly thought it was a kind of beer.

Bob Copeland "burp"

Most commercial meads are insipid. It takes a fairly high gravity and aging to get it right.

Mead, in Dutch "mede", reminds me of medieval stories. No idea it is still made and sold today.

A question not on the subject. Some discussions here on the site have a title that starts with "NSR", like this one on honey.
What does this "NSR" stands for?

OK, clear, found it already "Non Scooter Related". Logical.

... and SSR?

Sort of Scooter Related.

By related do you mean a Piaggio scooter?
Or even a scooter of another brand?

Any scooter. In theory, you could use 'V' to mean Not Vespa Related, or Sorta Vespa Related. But that distinction is rarely needed.

Thanks J.

'Next time the Sunriders are in Prescott, I'll show you a place. But spend the night.

Beekeeper here. Why is honey a scooter 🛵 topic. 🤪

NSR ... And many more.
(The acronym Not Scooter Related is used to highlight a topic not related to scooters)
There is also talk of cheese, read the forum summary.

HA! I thought you were starting a riddle. Why is honey a scooter topic? Because we all have cholesterol problems...? Hmm, little help here?

But putting some honey in a cup of hot milk and coffee after a cold day scooter ride is an elixir that cheers up.

Yes! Sooo much faster—the making, not the aging. But it's worth the wait.
Many years ago I was months in the making on a batch of mead—Baby Mead in prep of the arrival of our baby. While transferring between glass carboys, they touched....

Broken glass and liquid everywhere.

I've have NEVER sworn so much in my life. I also never brewed again for the next 20 years.

Then, with my kid's 21st approaching, I dove back into brewing and managed to brew a batch of Baby Mead without it ending up on the floor. Age is key for mead (well, that and not hitting two glass objects together). They've only gotten better when we've had a couple for his birthdays. It's been almost ten years now and we still have a half dozen bottles left.

It's so hard resist sampling aging mead. Some bottles just beg to be opened!
Full carboys scare me since I tripped on some stairs and broke one under my chest.

Could this become scooter related if I ask if you could use honey instead of diesel as an alternative to engine oil?

Anything to sweeten an argument that is becoming bitter ...