Elderflower mead

In the big tub, 3.5 litres of unsweetened elderflower infusion (three large handfuls trimmed flowers, steeped in boiling water for 12 hours). Next to it, and about to be whisked into it, are my two week old ginger bug, some raw ‘forest’ honey and a few grams of ground fermented bee pollen. 

A project to use up trimmings of beeswax and other parts of a beehive frame sent to Nordic Food Lab by a Spanish beekeper. He removed it from the hive as part of a strategy in apiculture that can mitigate the impact of the Varroa mite, which some believe contributes to Colony Collapse Disorder. The butter is sweet from the honey, both bitter and sour from the fermented pollen, and has the aroma of beeswax, made unmistakeable by a month of eating food infused with it. I seasoned it with about 0.5% salt. I made two batches, of which the other I brought to London from Copenhagen and have frozen. Based on this one, and the extra ageing, I can’t imagine what the new one will taste like, but will almost certainly be trying it on some pancakes.

An attempt to drain chunks of beeswax of the cream they have been infusing in for the last 36 hours, using the suction created by a chamber vacuum. First the pressure in the chamber drops and the cream boils at near 0 degrees celsius, de-aerating it. Then the pressure returns, dramatically altering the bubbling brew of honey, wax, cream and pollen, and dragging a little of the cream from the chambers of the beeswax

A Danish honeycomb and in the second picture, pollen fermented by the bees that lived inside it. Very hard to procure (given to the Nordic Food Lab by a beekeeper) and without much known about it, it is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten. It has a complex taste which, as you eat it, transforms from sweetness to bitterness to the sour tang of lactic fermentation, and it’s texture is somehow sticky, moist, powdery and dry all at the same time, with a pleasant resistance. Totally compelling