Mead Making Class: Mead-life Crisis

This is no MEAD-iocre workshop. It involves honey wine at an apiary and you might get a little buzzed!

Love honey, bees, refreshing and delicious beverages? This is the perfect class for you! In this three-hour session, you will learn the basics of making one of the oldest fermented drinks known to humans as “Ambrosia”, or Nectar of the Gods.

You'll go home with a five-litre "carboy" that will turn into delicious mead over the following few months. Run onsite at a working apiary you'll learn about the different types of mead, equipment, hygiene, selecting different types of honey and yeast, and aromatics you can add.

Alongside the completed mead, you'll go home with a complete professional kit and the confidence to make more mead in the future.

We start with a quick tour of the apiary and an overview of the different styles of hives. We then move to a converted shipping container looking out over the apiary for morning tea and a honey tasting. We then deep dive into the process of making mead and get started on making a batch in your own bottle to take home with you.

The workshop is a collaboration between Hamish Ta-mé from Bowral Beekeeping and Jeff Aston, head winemaker at Tractorless Vineyard. The two came together through a shared love of bees, sustainability and regional produce.

We will have several varieties of mead on hand to taste as well as a few of Jeff's most recent wines.

Please note: Public dates for this class require at least 4 guests to run. In the unlikely event that we don't reach this number, we'll cancel the class; in this case we'll inform you and allow you to get a refund or reschedule, so please watch your email/SMS one day prior to the class.

Beginners welcome. No experience is required.
  Everything is supplied for the workshop including ingredients for your first batch and equipment to take home with you. These include a one-gallon fermenting container, airlock, racking cane, yeast, hydrometer, yeast nutrients, sanitiser, and recipes.