What a great evening we had on Monday 09 September!
We had 17 entries into the Runny Honey class, 8 entries into Set Honey, 9 Mead’s and 4 entries into the ‘food cooked with honey’ class. We had around 24 members plus 3 people who came along as they had heard about us and were thinking of joining Shipston Beekeepers (and after tasting our honey, mead and cakes I’m sure they will!).
Once the tables were set out and a random number assigned to all entries David Blower MB set the scene for the evening. He suggested the best way way to taste honey is to put it on the side of your hand to warm it slightly, and reminded everyone to not double-dip the tasting sticks! He also reminded members that Mead is around 14% and that it is normally entered in separate categories of sweet, medium and dry as people generally tend to prefer sweet meads compared to dry ones so putting them all in one category might favour the sweet meads. Everyone was then given a scoring sheet and we then split members across the 4 tables (to avoid a crush at the mead table, of course 😉 )
And then we were off…..
Now 27 people tasting potentially 39 different entries is….a lot of calculations to determine the winners.
Graham and Ray crunched the numbers and whilst they were doing so David Blower gave us a talk on how to prepare honey (and mead) for entry into a ‘proper’ honey show.
And the winners are…
| CLASS | 1ST | 2ND | 3RD |
|---|---|---|---|
| Runny Honey | George Heighton | Gary, Paul, David B, Martin, Victoria, Abby | |
| Set Honey | Graham Franklin | Mike Foster | Douglas Nethercleft |
| Mead | Paul Neal | David Blower | Mike Clarke |
| Cooking | Caroline Pearce | Julia Neal | Caroline Thomas |
And the overall winner of the John Castle Memorial Plate, based on total points won was
As always these events do not happen without time and effort on the part of members. For the honey show we thank Ray Pearce, Julia Neal, Graham Franklin and David Blower for pulling the evening together and making it all happen on the night.
And of course we thank all the members who took the time and effort to prepare and bring in their honey, mead and cooked items.
Finally a quick reminder that October’s 2nd Monday meeting is Mandy Cage giving us a talk on ‘Cooking with Honey’