Update 1/5/10

I dug out some honeys that I bought a while back this morning, too make a couple (well 3 really) batches. Hopefully by the time I've finished typing this, the pictures will have arrived via my email account as I can't work out how to get them directly off my phone/PDA.

So, 3 different honeys.

2 of them were bought from the local honey wholesaler/distributor who keeps a good range, just not quite as wide a selection as I'd like but then again, he doesn't keep different honey specifically for mead making. The 2 I got from there, was "Italian Chestnut" honey and "Clear Mexican" honey. Both of these are supposed  to be quite dark coloured and strongly flavoured. The third one came from the local branch of Lidl and is supposed to be "Aromatic". The label says stuff like "Summer Blossom Honey with added Wild Blossom" - WTF that's supposed to mean is anyones guess. All I do know at the moment, is that like the Italian Chestnut honey, it's crystalised and is currently sitting in a sink full of hot water to gently dissolve the crystaline sugars back into liquid so it'll come out of the packing OK.

 This is what the label from the "Lidl" honey looks like, as you can see (despite the shitty picture) there's not a great deal of info on it. So in truth it could be from anywhere.

Personally I like a little more provenance than that, but they only put the basic stuff, I'll have to go and see if there's anything better on the reverse label - blended honey often just says "produce of EU and non-EU countries". And one of the honeys that I like to stay away from is Eucalyptus honey as it does seem to retain some of the smell/taste properties of the original plants. I don't mind Eucalyptus but not in honey. The Italian Chestnut honey as also crystalised (I can feel it through the sides of the small bucket (it's in small 1.36kg buckets as that's about what I like to use per gallon, though I've recently taken to using a little more, but 1.36kg/3lb as the base amount, and usually end up having to get more to use for back sweetening so that at least it has the taste/flavour of the original honey - as long as it doesn't end up as cloyingly sweet as the commercial ones I tried the other year.......

Well I must have fucked up somewhere as I can't make the picture of the Italian Chestnut and Clear Mexican honeys appear and I'm too lazy to go and take another picture so if you're that interested (or sad ???) then you'll have to follow the link to paynes......

As soon as I've got the honey back to being "runny" again, I'll post about what I've done with it.....