Lamorna Osborne from the Illawarra Beekeepers Club explaining her beginners mead recipe.
Winter Solstice Mead Making at Cumberland
The Winter Solstice provided the perfect backdrop for the Cumberland Beekeepers Club’s sold-out mead making course, with 25 participants gathering at the new Learning Centre at Chifley College Bidwill Campus to discover the art and science of mead making.
Attendees travelled from across New South Wales, including the Illawarra and Newcastle regions, with several beekeeping clubs represented alongside members of the public who were curious to learn the craft. With hive activity slowing over winter, the course provided an ideal opportunity for beekeepers to explore another rewarding way to enjoy and add value to their honey harvest.
The workshop brought together complete beginners and experienced mead makers in a welcoming and relaxed atmosphere. Throughout the day there were plenty of questions, lively discussions about different honey varieties, and stories shared between participants, all united by a passion for bees and honey. By the end of the course, even those who had arrived feeling a little apprehensive left with the confidence to nurture the mead they made once at home.
Presenters Lamorna Osborne from the Illawarra Beekeepers Club and Kieran Engel from the Cumberland Beekeepers Club each demonstrated their own approach to mead making, highlighting that while the fundamentals remain the same, there is plenty of room for creativity and personal preference.
Lamorna, a retired doctor, shared her passion for producing elegant, champagne-style meads. Her expertise is evident, with her very first batch of mead being awarded First Prize at the Orange Show. She encouraged participants to consider the floral source of their honey, recommending bold-flavoured honeys to create distinctive finished meads.
Kieran demonstrated his preferred style of sweeter meads, drawing on approximately three years of experimentation with different honeys, herbal teas and fruit to develop unique flavour profiles. His mead-making journey has also been recognised, earning Second Place in the Mead Competition at the 2025 Tocal Beekeepers Field Day.
Having both presenters demonstrate their own recipes side by side gave participants the opportunity to see that there is no single “correct” way to make mead. While both presenters followed the same principles of fermentation, their different styles illustrated the versatility of mead making and encouraged participants to develop recipes that reflected their own tastes.
Participants learned about sanitation, yeast selection, nutrition, equipment, recipe variations, fermentation techniques and flavour development before preparing their own five-litre batch to take home. Although most participants used the same yeast strain, every batch of mead was unique. Some used honey harvested from their own apiaries, others brought honey from their local beekeeper, while several chose honey produced by the Cumberland Beekeepers Club apiary. Each floral source will contribute its own distinctive aroma, flavour and character to the finished mead, ensuring there will be plenty of variety when bottles are eventually opened.By the end of the day, every participant left with a freshly prepared batch of mead to keep quietly fermenting away at home, together with the knowledge and confidence to continue experimenting with future recipes. The Cumberland Beekeepers Club looks forward to bringing participants together again in the coming months to sample the finished meads and celebrate the results of their Winter Solstice workshop.
Events such as these are only possible through the dedication of many volunteers. The Cumberland Beekeepers Club sincerely thanks presenters Lamorna Osborne and Kieran Engel for generously sharing their knowledge and experience. Heather Engel for organising the purchase of equipment and liaising with the presenters as did Bruce White. Nadine Chapman for managing registrations and catering, David Giblin and Chifley College Bidwill Campus for generously hosting the event in the College’s new Learning Centre. The Cumberland Beekeepers Club Executive Committee for their support in organising the course. Lastly, we’d like to thank everyone who attended for contributing to such an enjoyable and successful day.
