Why the Season
Matters

Raw honey is not a consistent ingredient. Its flavour changes with the season, the weather, and the particular mix of wildflowers the bees have been visiting. A batch of honey gathered in June from a meadow full of clover and meadowsweet will taste different from one gathered in August from the same hives. That variation is not a problem to be engineered away. It is the whole point.

We use raw, unfiltered honey from a single apiary in Cheshire, and we brew with whatever that honey tastes like when it arrives. The result is that no two batches of Kennard & Co mead are quite identical. This is something we consider a feature.

What the Bees Are Doing

A honeybee will forage up to five miles from the hive in search of nectar. In practice, most foraging happens much closer — within a mile or two — and the character of the honey reflects whatever is flowering in that radius at the time of collection. In Cheshire, that means something different in May than it does in July.

The early season — April through June — is dominated by fruit blossom, hawthorn, and clover. Honey gathered in this period tends to be lighter and more delicate, with a clean floral sweetness and a pale, almost translucent colour. It ferments to a mead that is bright and fresh, with the honey character sitting close to the surface.

By midsummer, the wildflower meadows are at their fullest. Meadowsweet, red clover, knapweed, and willowherb are all in flower simultaneously, and the honey becomes richer and more complex — deeper in colour, with a warmth that the spring honey lacks. This is the honey we use for our Traditional mead, and it is the reason the Traditional has the character it does.

"The keeping of bees is like the direction of sunbeams."

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854

The Role of the Weather

The season is not only about which flowers are blooming. It is also about the conditions under which the bees are working. A warm, dry summer produces different honey from a cool, wet one — not because the flowers are different, but because the nectar itself changes with the weather.

In a dry year, nectar concentrations are higher — the plant produces less of it, but what it produces is more intense. The bees work harder to collect enough, and the resulting honey is denser and more aromatic. In a wet year, nectar is more dilute, the honey is lighter, and the fermentation tends to produce a mead with more delicacy and less body.

Neither is better. They are different, and the difference is interesting. A brewer who works with raw, seasonal honey learns to read the ingredient and adjust accordingly — fermentation time, yeast selection, the decision of when to rack and when to wait. The honey tells you what it wants to become, if you are paying attention.

What This Means for the Elderflower

The seasonal dimension is most visible in our Elderflower mead, because elderflower is itself a seasonal ingredient with a very short window. Elder trees flower for roughly three weeks in late May and early June in Cheshire. The flowers must be picked at the right moment — fully open but not yet beginning to turn — and used quickly, because they lose their fragrance within hours of picking.

We forage the elderflower ourselves from hedgerows and field margins near the apiary. The quantity available varies year to year depending on the spring weather — a late frost can damage the blossom significantly, and a wet May reduces both the yield and the fragrance of the flowers. In a good year, the Elderflower mead is intensely floral and almost perfumed. In a difficult year, it is more restrained. Both are honest.

"Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, close bosom-friend of the maturing sun."

John Keats, To Autumn, 1819

Drinking with the Seasons

There is a case to be made for matching the mead to the time of year. The Elderflower is a spring and early summer drink — light, fragrant, best served well chilled on a warm evening. The Traditional and Vanilla suit autumn and winter, when their warmth and body feel appropriate. The Dark Berry sits somewhere between the two — complex enough for a winter evening, but not so heavy that it feels out of place in September.

None of this is a rule. Drink what you like when you like it. But there is something satisfying about drinking a mead that was made from honey gathered in the same season you are sitting in — a small continuity between the meadow and the glass that most drinks cannot offer.

The bees do not know they are making an ingredient. They are doing what they have always done, following the flowers, working the season. We are just paying attention.