Mid-winter in Maine can be cold and damp at the same time. Especially along the coast. Not a combination that can be endured cheerfully without recourse to a hot beverage that has spirit lifting potential. My very favorite is hot spiced mead. 

Mulling mead is so simple, quick and warming that it should be part of every cooks repetoire. The trick to enjoying this winter warmer is to have the ingredients and a few simple tools ready when you need some core warming pleasure. A great mead to start with is my R. Nicoll not so Dry. It's made with my own wildflower honey and then sweetened lightly with extra honey so it's ready to mull right from the bottle. Pour 6-8 ounces of mead per person in the top of a double boiler. Place one half teaspoon of your choice of mulling spices per cup of mead into a tea filter bag such as the T-sac #1 size. (I personally enjoy Gryffon Ridge Silk Road Mulling Spices.) It will hold enough spices for at least 1 bottle of mead. Close the T-sac by folding the top a few times and then making two slight tears at the closure to hold it. (photo below) Place the spice packet in the double boiler with the mead. Make sure there is water in the bottom of the pot and then turn the heat on low. Place the cover on the top to trap and return any steam to the wine. Gently heating the mead will help to slowly release the volitile oils and other flavor components in the spices. Do not let the wine get above 180 F. That means no simmering, and absolutely no boiling! When the mulling is to your peasure, ladle or pour the mead into pre-warmed mugs. Enjoy!

Experience will help you judge the correct amount of spices and the degree of sweetness that you like. Use more or less of the spice mixture to suite your taste and adjust the sweetness by adding honey as you see fit. Additional flavors such as fresh organic orange or lemon zest, and extra cinnamon or vanilla can really help one forget the cold and damp!

Yesterday, January 24th, was in the low fifty degrees of temperature on the coast of Maine. Not unusual for midwinter as we almost always get a brief thaw after a couple of months of cold. This will pass into the very snowy months of February and March even though there will be increasingly more daylight as we get closer to spring.

The bees took flight during the midday warmth. These are known as "cleansing flights" as the bees will not defecate inside the hive and so wait for decent weather to fly. Honeybees are very fastidious; they coat the inside of the hive with propolis, which is famous for it's antibacterial properties. It gives all the exposed wood on the inside of the hive a golden color. Thus, they live in a very clean environment. I was hoping they would be flying so I visited my two bee yards with a camera to record what was happening. The results are shown below.

I'm sad to report that I've lost three hives this winter to mites; a very tenacious and widespread pest. I had noticed one hive absconded in the fall. I feared the worst and so called the Maine State Bee Inspector to get his opinion on the hive collapse. We inspected the hive in late November. His opinion was collapse due to mite infestation. Beekeepers are now trying to breed bees with even greater hygenic behaviour so that they will groom the mites off of themselves. There is good progress being made on this front.

An interesting fact about honeybees and their pollination of plants and flowers; depending on the pollen source, there can be anywhere from 250,000 to 6,000,000 grains of pollen on one bee while it is foraging.

After looking at the wine environment on a very small scale last time, I think it's appropriate to look at how the blueberry mead "Wild Blue" fits into a broader picture. When I decide to make a wine I try to imagine its "utility" if you will; just how will it compliment the world out there, what need am I trying to fill. What will be that match made in heaven? Wild Blue is a stellar compliment to many foods (of course!) and in particular Appleton Creamery's Blueberry Torte. The torte is a multilayered affair consisting of goat's milk cheese, cheese mixed with blueberries and something called blueberry bark (blueberries pressed into a fruit leather). Handmade and sweetened only with blueberries it is earthy, creamy and fruity. When you add Wild Blue's flavors of warm blueberry blossom honey and dry, spicy fruit you have a celestial match! 

I want to call attention to the handiwork of my honeybees as well. Both the beekeeper (me) and they have had a good year. They have taught me much about how to nurture and not obstruct them as they go about their business. But fall is here so it's time to prepare them for winter. The biggest part of which is to insure they have plenty of food for the long Maine winter. I've harvested all the honey that is extra for the bees. The "supers" are all removed from the hives. Some hives produced more than others and so I am setting out this extra frame of honey (photo below), and the others that make up a super, to even out the supplies between hives. All the hives will forage this honey equally. It forces them to pack more honey into the two brood boxes that are their core home. They will remain in these boxes through the winter, coming out on the warm days for a stretch and weather check (sound familiar?). 

Part of the business of running Fiddler's Reach Honey Wine is making sure that I have product integrity and consistancy. With that in mind I have always considered the laboratory testing/ knowledge side of this business to be as important as the winemaking side. They go hand in hand, and I feel comfortable in keeping the testing of wines in the forefront of wine related work. Part of that lab work now involves visual observation of the wine through a microscope and the possibility of photographing the wine at that level. Not only is it fascinating to see but reassuring to know that all is well at the microbiological level. I've mentioned before that I've received a grant from the Maine Technology Institute to analyze the biomass of blueberry mead regarding wild organisms, as well as optimizing wine yeast performance in mead. I think a photo or two showing the hidden workings of honey wine could be of interest. Note the measurement line in the first photo. I can measure the size of these microscopic yeasts! The color differences come from me playing with the camera settings for color and contrast while observing different samples. This is Saccaromyces cerevisiae fermenting my Blueberry Mead. The Mead is called Wild Blue and is made with wild Maine blueberries and blueberry blossom honey. And, yes the yeast is filtered out before bottling. 

Several years ago I committed to developing a business model that is "vertically integrated". My goal is for Fiddler's Reach to provide its own honey and organically grown fruit for the wines.   That means I have more than just winemaking duties to consider on any given day. Its something of a balancing act, but I love the variety of projects and how they integrate within the bigger picture of the meadery. There is a learning curve for something like beekeeping, but for elderberry cultivation and winemaking it is a total reinvention of the wheel, so to speak. I am learning by doing over many seasons. Here are some photos of this spring's "vertical integration projects".    

     Installing Nucleus Hives in the bee yard

Assembling Beehives
                                                                                                                                                                        

Hanging Swarm Traps. If the hive increases its population in the spring, it might divide, with the old queen and most of the field force leaving to start a new home. Hopefully they stop here.

A cover crop of Crimson Clover between the rows of Elderberry bushes. I'm growing Elderberries using organic methods such as adding rock dust to the soil like dolomitic limestone and greensand, along with cover cropping nitrogen fixing plants like clover.                              

I've been growing elderberries for about five years now. I started with six small plants, taught myself to propagate them and now have approximately 300 plants  situated on a quarter acre. It is now time to work on the process of turning elderberries into mead. These photos show a color (anthocyanin) extraction test based on a certain variable (that will not be revealed here).

Here are photos of Elder flower and berry, too.

I believe time is speeding up. Either that or I have been secretly deceiving myself about the number of things I can accomplish in any particular day. I will admit that on a daily basis I  fail to accomplish my list completely. Some checked, some no check. That's ok for the day, and usually there are some checks, and partial checks count for something, too. As I move forward with the winery I've become very familiar with many of the routine tasks on the daily list. Sufficiently so that my motions are pretty streamlined now and I generally avoid doing more than I need to get the various jobs done well (no moving full cases of wine  more than necessary!) check!

I'm in the midst of a Grant from the Maine Technology Institute titled "Biomass Analysis in the Blueberry Mead Process". The photos show flasks of Blueberry must being aerated (with control flasks alongside) and the temperature controller that governs the heating mat that the flasks rest on.