Choosing Honey for Making Mead

Honey is made by bees collecting flower nectar from flowers, mixing it with a few enzymes, and then sealing it in wax. This process actually makes honey very stable, as it will not ferment or mold unless water is added. Honey will sometimes crystallize, but it is still very usable.

If a hive is placed in an area where there is predominately one type of plant flowering at that time with a few weed exceptions, beekeepers are allowed to call the honey a single variety honey by the name of the plant. Therefore, if a hive is placed in an apple orchard, and the beekeeper believes the honey to be made out of at least 80% apple flower nectar, then the honey can be called apple honey. However, if that guarantee cannot be met, they honey will usually be labeled as wildflower honey, or not labeled at all.

At last weekend’s mead class, they had about 30 different jars honey, in which we got to taste by dipping toothpicks into the jars. I have to say, pumpkin honey was probably my favorite, as it had a little bit of spice to it. I didn’t care for chestnut, as it seemed a bit bitter to me.

So what honeys make the best mead? The first rule is to taste the honey. If it doesn’t taste good, it won’t make a good mead. After that, fruit honeys are pretty good with the exception of melons, which can give off sulfur. We were told to stay away from maple honey, and pine honey apparently creates off flavors such as menthol. We were also told that buckwheat in general does not make a good mead. I tasted the dark colored buckwheat honey, and it was very malty, but they had a second Eastern Oregon honey that was much lighter in color and tasted very different that they said made a good mead. So this proves that there are exceptions to the rule and reinforces that the honey should be tasted first. However, they did suggest that the darker buckwheat honey could be good if blended with other honey to tone it down while perking another honey up.

In the case of the two buckwheat honeys tasting different, according to Honey.com, “the darker the honey, the more apt it is to taste stronger and more robust. The lighter colored honeys are usually more delicate and sweeter in flavor.”

They told us that orange blossom honey and fireweed honey make some very good mead, and recommend it for beginners. I have seen a lot of orange blossom honey from the homebrew stores, but never fire weed. Also, I usually see clover honey in the grocery stores, which makes a decent mead.

After my class, I went down to my local Saturday farmer’s market to see what I could turn up there. Again, I found orange blossom honey which is imported to this region, and clover honey. I also turned up blackberry honey, which I realized to be a lighter milder honey than the other varieties. Still, it tasted good and would probably make a decent mead while supporting my local region.

Miracle Fruit and Beer

After reading the Mad Fermentationist’s blog titled “Miracle Fruit Sour Beer Tasting”, I bought some Miracle Fruit Tablets and decided to try them out at the Portland International Beerfest 2010.

I didn’t consume a miracle fruit pill when I first got there, as there were some things I wanted to taste as is without altered tastebuds. It was when I got a Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse beer that I finally tried out one of the pills. I didn’t really make that many notes regarding this beer ahead of time, simply stating, “Eh, it is beer.” So even after five 4 oz samples of cider, mead, and fruit beers, I wasn’t really caring to drink beer. Then I took the miracle fruit pill, and then tried the Franziskaner Dunkel-Weisse. It tasted better to me, and I was starting to pick up more creamy and caramel notes, which were probably already there but hidden. Since sourness was being toned down and replaced with sweetness, these characteristics were coming though stronger to me.

Since there were a lot of sour beers there, I tried New Belgium La Folie. I turned to my husband and said, “Wow, this beer must be really sour, because this is syrupy sweet to me right now!” In fact, it was almost too much so, but it was good. When we came back the next day, my husband got a sample of the La Folie again, and it was really sour, but I could still detect the syrup taste on the edges. Again, it was probably always there, but the sourness just put it into balance, and once it was stripped away and converted to sweetness, the syrup taste became dominate.

With my altered taste buds, my husband got 21^st Amendment Double Trouble Imperial IPA, which is a very hoppy beer, too hoppy for my husband. When I tried it with my altered taste buds, I pushed it away. My husband was shocked, “You can still taste that?” “Yes.” He was a little disappointed, as he hoped that with my altered taste buds that I would like it and drink it for him! Also, if I liked it, I might start drinking more beer with him. Now, everyone has different tastes, and everyone reacts differently to the miracle fruit, but this experience is why I believe the CSI: New York got it wrong when they said it makes bitter foods sweet, as the IPA was still very bitter to me.

In hind sight, I should have gone and gotten a porter, which are typically less hoppy and more creamy with chocolate or coffee notes, but I did not think of it at the time. I’ll have to have a miracle fruit tasting sometime in the future, so I’ll try an remember then. I’m excited!

Book Review: Tasting Club

While researching about supertasters, I called up the catalog online for my local library to see what books they had on taste. I came across a very interesting one called Tasting Club: Gathering Together to Share and Savor Your Favorite Tastes by Dina Cheney.

This book starts out covering the basics, including a brief blurb on how the tongue tastes food. This chapter is really devoted to actually having tastings, forming a tasting club, and an extensive section on how to conduct a tasting. It includes how to send an invite, and what to provide your guests to assist with the tasting, such as pens and a tasting grid found later in the book.

From there, the book has a chapter on wine, chocolate, cheese, honey, tea, extra virgin olive oil, cured meats, balsamic vinegar, apples, and beer. For example, with wine, Cheney talks about terroir, how wine is made, different types of wine, location, grape varieties including a table talking about characteristics, finding wine, shopping and storing wine, choosing food accompaniments including a menu and a few recipes, organizing the tasting, learning your palate, a tasting grid for wine, and a wine glossary of terms. This organization and detail is repeated for the other foods, with minor tweaks to better match the subject.

I was fairly impressed with this book and I may try a tasting from it, such as in the balsamic vinegar chapter. However, for something like apples where there are a lot of different varieties out there, this book oversimplified things and only stuck to the grocery store apple varieties.

IBU

I’ve been writing about tasting here recently, and this weekend is the Portland International Beerfest 2010, of which my husband really wants to go. He has been on a sour beer kick recently, and I’m counting six that are going to be there.

But what would I like? Well, since I don’t like most beers because they are too bitter, I look for the IBU rating to help guide me as to what beers I might find drinkable. International Bitterness Units (IBU) is a measurement of 1 mg of isomerized hop oils per liter of beer, so beers that used a lot of hops have a high IBU. And since I don’t like beer due to bitterness, I gravitate towards really really low IBU beers, which includes wheat beers, and, apparently, sour beers. I’m guessing that the bitter hop flavor interferes too much with the sour flavor.

I should note that IBU measures how much hop oil is in beer, but it doesn’t really reflect how bitter the beer might truly be. This is because there are other things that can make the beer bitter (dandelions, orange peel), and then things like sugar or perceived sweetness can balance out the bitterness. For instance, malt is not completely fermentable, leaving a sweetness, and alcohol is also perceived as sweet. If two beers are at 50 IBU, but one is 5% and the other is 8% alcohol, the 5% alcohol is going to taste more bitter. However, usually if a beer is at 75 IBU or higher, regardless of the alcohol content, it is thought of as being a very hoppy beer.

I tire of beer at the festival, there is cider and mead! Local Wandering Aengus Ciderworks should be there with their excellent Wanderlust and Cherry Anthem Ciders, both on tap. JK Scrumpy is one of my favorites, who will be pouring their Orchard Gate Gold. And cider powerhouse Crispin Cider is suppose to be there with their Artisanal Honey Crisp and The Saint. I’m also glad that Mountain Meadows Mead will be back up from California. I’ve sampled and bought their cranberry mead, which they will have with them this time along with the agave mead.

Are You a Supertaster? Take a Supertaster Test

There are three main ways to test if one is a super taster – count taste buds or consume two products.

As I mentioned before, supertasters have more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. These taste buds can be counted by swabbing your tongue with a cotton ball with blue food coloring. The fungiform papillae will not turn blue, but instead remain pink. From there, take a piece of paper with a hole cut out of it and count how many pink spots you see in that hole. Supertasters will have more than 30 papillae in that area. BBC Science and Nature shows a good example of this demonstration.

Another easy test to conduct is a Saccharin Test. Take one packet of saccharin (Sweet’N Low) and combine it with two-thirds of a cup of water, and then taste it. For some, there will be a dominate sweet taste, indicating that they are an undertaster, while others will notice a dominate bitter taste, indicating they are a supertaster. Those who find balance between sweet and bitter are regular tasters.

The last test is to consume PROP, which will be violently bitter to supertasters, bitter to regular tasters, and tasteless to undertasters.

I highly recommend reading wine critic Mike Steinberger’s journey to find out that he was one of the 5% of nontasters (not a supertaster) who could taste PROP. This resulted in more testing.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
  
• http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/PersonalBest/story?id=2740603
  
• http://supertastertest.com/
  
• http://www.slate.com/id/2168768
  
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/body/articles/senses/tongue_experiment.shtml
  
• http://health.howstuffworks.com/taste4.htm
  

Supertaster

Supertasters are people who have a few more fungiform papillae type taste buds, which makes them a little more sensitive when tasting. One quarter of the population seems to be supertasters.

When I first heard of supertasters, it was in conjunction with drinking wine, and I thought, “Nope, I’m not one. I have such a hard time smelling and tasting things in wine that I can’t be.” Then I took a “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine class. They said that supertasters avoid coffee because of the bitterness, which I do, so that got me looking into supertasters a little bit more.

Here is a list of foods supertasters avoid with comments about how supertasters taste in () when available, along with my reactions:

• Burssel sprouts, cabbage, and kale –not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
• Coffee (too bitter) – smells nice, but I need a ton of sugar and cream to drink it. And very little coffee.
• Dark chocolate – I don’t like it, and will consume only milk chocolate. I won’t touch chocolate chip cookies due to the semi-sweet chips used. And I will hardly eat baked chocolate, such as a cholocate cake or brownies, but it does help to have some milk to wash it down.
• Hoppy beer (too bitter) – yup, that’s me!
• Grapefruit juice – won’t touch it
• Green tea – it is okay, but I would much rather have black tea
• Spinach – I like it as a 50/50 mix with lettuce, but straight spinach sometimes tastes, well, dirty to me. However, there are certain lettuces I won’t eat, either, because they are too bitter. I won’t eat Iceberg lettuce because, well, I’m picky.
• Soy products – not part of my normal diet so I couldn’t really say
• Carbonation – sometimes soda is overcarbonated and annoys my nose, but carbonated beer and cider doesn’t bother me
• Chili peppers (burn is more intense) – I can handle them in moderate doses
• Tonic water (more bitter) – I love gin, but I won’t drink it with tonic water, but 7-up instead
• Olives (salt is more intense) – I like black olives, but not green
• Sugary foods (sickening sweet vs no such thing as too sweet for regular tasters) – I do have issues with too sweet, but mostly too rich. So this is a toss up. I prefer fruity desserts, or even things like rolls, but not really cakes. However, I do like sweet tea.
• Frosting (yucky) – don’t care for it
• Saccharine (strong after taste) – I don’t remember
• Alcohol (too sharp – less of a chance of being an alcoholic) – well, I don’t like my alcohol dry, but I don’t consume a drink a day.
• Ginger (burn) – I like ginger
• Foods should be tepid – even if I did drink coffee, it is served way too hot for me.
• Different levels of milk fat (can tell) – We normally keep nonfat milk in the house, but I went to see the in-laws who had 2%, and it tasted sweeter and creamier to me. Same thing at restaurants. And I can tell the difference between goat’s milk and cow’s milk and their cheeses, and a lot of people can’t.
• Broccoli (don’t like when raw because it is bitter) – I’ve always avoided raw broccoli, but I love cooked broccoli.
• Fatty foods (undesirable due to texture) – okay, I like fat to a degree, but I probably don’t avoid it like they suggest supertasters do. For instance, I love cheese!
• This could explain why I don’t like 90% of beers – the hops make it too bitter for me.

Supertasters are also suppose to be skinnier, which any doctor would consider me on the heavy side.

Supertasters don’t care for vegetables, either, so they are more at risk for cancers and there is a link between supertasters having a higher number of colon polyps due to vegetable avoidance. Compared to my husband, to plays with his food rather than eating, I like my vegetables more cooked than him (though not took cooked), which reduces bitterness. I eat them because I know I should.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster
  
• http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/18/science/chocolate-lover-or-broccoli-hater-answer-s-on-the-tip-of-your-tongue.html?sec=health&spon=&pagewanted
  
• http://www.slate.com/id/2168768/pagenum/all/#p2
  
• http://health.howstuffworks.com/taste4.htm
  

Class: Le Nez du Vin Part II

Last night was my second and last class for “Le Nez du Vin”: The Nose of Wine, offered by my local community college “Cooking & Wine School." It is a class designed to help improve one’s ability to identify smells in wine, with last night focusing on red wines.

Our lecture for the evening was about taste. Taste and smell are different senses in the fact that our bodies are having reactions to chemicals in order to sense. Another odd thing is that 75% of tasting is actually smelling. Together, they help us identify if something is safe to consume.

Recently, there is a group of people being identified as “supertasters.” About one quarter of the population seems to have more of the smaller taste buds, making them more sensitive to tasting things. There is a simple test of consuming a harmless chemical called propylthouracil (PROP), which will taste bitter to a supertaster, while a nontaster will taste nothing. I’ve always doubted that I was a supertaster, but they said that supertasters avoid coffee because it is too bitter, which I do. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, I also avoid grapefruit juice, only consume spinach in a lettuce mixture, I don’t care for soy, and I love gin but cannot handle tonic water. Maybe supertaster explains my aversion to goat’s milk products, when others cannot tell the difference? My instructors did indicate that sometimes supertasters avoid alcohol because it “burns,” so maybe I’m not a supertaster. I’ll have to try and find PROP and find out for sure.

Back to wine – besides actually tasting wine, there is also how it feels in the mouth, which can be broken up into a few categories:

• Body – sometimes thought of as thickness. Ideally, wine should be silky, not thin.
• Temperature – consuming any food cold masks flavors. If a vendor is having you taste refrigerator cold wine, then there are flaws that they are hiding.
• Texture
• Tannin – tannins create a bit of puckering. A little bit of tannins open up the taste buds, while a lot of tannins close down the taste buds, sometimes even leaving the mouth feeling dry. Initially, tannins are short chains which are not exactly pleasant tasting. As they age, they bond to make longer chains, which taste better.
• Alcohol

Somehow, I had a wine smelling reputation from the previous week, and it kind of spooked me when a clerk came in and said I was the one to beat, and I had never seen her before. Plus, I didn’t really think I was that good as I had a list go guide me before. Well, after last week’s 14/17 correct on smelling jars, it was decided not to give us a list of what smells there were to challenge me. I still ended up with a 14/17, with one very close one of being marionberry jam (a thornless blackberry hybrid developed at OSU in 1956), and I thought it was blueberry jam. I had a little harder time with the flaws, and said one was like plant rot, but more pleasant, and he said it was actually the water drained off of a can of mushrooms, so he was trying to get us to smell fungus.

When we started drinking the wines, I had a hard time, as all of them had a black pepper nose to me, and it was difficult to get past that to smell any fruit. Maybe I’m not a supertaster.