Edible Vancouver Island Summer 2022
On the plus side, our craft distilling rules, which require spirits to be made with 100% B.C. agricultural inputs or face massive mark ups, have made it easier to make honey spirits here than anywhere else. So when local distilleries like Merridale in the Cowichan Valley and DEVINE wanted to add a “rum” to their lineup, they looked to local honey rather than imported sugar cane or molasses. The craft designation also allowed Brimacombe to open Canada’s first honey based distillery in 2014, only one of four worldwide at the time, and encouraged Salt Spring Shine Distillery to start producing its honey “moonshine” three years later. “It’s only possible here in British Columbia because we don’t pay any markup,” Brimacombe says. “I’m so happy I could create this product in B.C. because of craft.” FOR THE SAKE OF THE BEES But there are other, more important reasons to use honey in wine and spirits.
“My uncle and grandfather used to make mead. We had beehives and made honey…and we always made mead for family consump tion,” says Liptrot, who has been keeping bees since 1962 and mak ing mead seriously for 45 years. Eventually he moved to Vancouver Island and in 2003, opened Tugwell Creek Honey Farm & Meadery just outside Sooke—the first licensed, commercial meadery in Western Canada. Now there are about a dozen meaderies across B.C., including Middle Moun tain on Hornby Island and Coastal Black in the Comox Valley, which makes mead as well as fruit wines. Tugwell Creek uses honey mostly from its own 100 or so hives for a lineup that includes sweet, dry, flavoured and fortified meads, including the spiced mead known as metheglin. “Because mead is such an old product, it’s got literally hundreds of different styles,” Liptrot says. “We’ve been making drier meads in our family for quite some time.” Mead, he notes, is making a comeback. “It’s not on par with distill ing or cideries, but it’s definitely a growth industry,” he says. For fermentation to take place, yeast trans forms starch or sugar into alcohol. But honey is antimicrobial, antibacterial and, a little ironically, contains too much sugar to ferment easily. “The higher the sugar content, the more challenging the fermenta tion,” says Kevin Titcomb, head distiller at DEVINE Distillery in the Saanich Peninsula, which produces a clear Honey Shine, barrel aged Honey Shine Amber and Black Bear spiced “rum.” Because of that high sugar content, honey needs to be diluted to create the right conditions for a fermentation that is longer and slower than it is for grain—up to four weeks, rather than three to four days—and creates perfect conditions for contamination. The difficult ferment isn’t the only challenge. Just getting hold of honey is, too. There are few large-volume honey producers on the Island, or, in fact, across B.C. Honey is a lot more expensive than grain. It is transported in cumbersome, 640-pound barrels—“You can’t just squeeze your little plastic bear container,” Brimacombe says drily. And it is sticky to work with. A F I N I CK Y FERMENT Unfortunately, making mead, which is also the base for honey spirits, isn’t at all easy. “It’s much more difficult than work ing with grain or grapes, primarily because honey is a food commodity that is quite resistant to spoilage,” Liptrot says.
“Why honey? It’s to have a positive impact on our food system,” says Brimacombe, whose distillery produces Unruly Gun, Unruly Vodka, Drunken Hive Rum and a spiced honey liqueur called Krupnik, as well as a handful of grain-based spirits. “I just wanted to run a business that was aligned with my values and didn’t just take and take and take.” Honey is a byproduct made by bees after they pollinate the flowers for the crops we
Using honey in wine or spirits just encourages more pollination, which in turn protects our food system.
eat; using honey in wine or spirits just encourages more pollination, which in turn protects our food system. “We’re not diverting food from the food system and that makes me feel good,” he says. When he opened Wayward, he partnered with a farm that, in 2014, had 300 hives and now has 1,500. But in recent years the bee population has been decimated by drought, heat waves, fires, floods, atmospheric rivers and supply chain problems created by the COVID-19 pandemic. “One of the reasons we’ve expanded into grain spirits is there’s no honey right now,” he says. “There are no bees.” Since honey wines and spirits encourage pollination, and ensure our food security, that’s one good reason to drink them. But an even better one is simply that they taste so darn good. “Honey makes a nice, clean, beautiful spirit. There’s a natural sweet ness and the mouthfeel is nice and smooth,” says Titcomb. “From a consumer point of view, people love them. From a cocktail point of view, people love them. It just makes a beautiful base spirit.”
Seven places on Vancouver and the Gulf Islands to try mead or honey-based spirits:
MEAD: Tugwell Creek
Middle Mountain Mead middlemountainmead.com
DEVINE Distillery devinedistillery.com Merridale Cidery & Distillery merridale.ca Salt Spring Shine Craft Distillery saltspringshine.com
Honey Farm & Meadery tugwellcreekfarm.com
SPIRITS: Wayward Distillery waywarddistillery.com
Coastal Black Estate Winery coastalblack.ca
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