WHAT’S better than beer on tap?
Honey, especially if it’s made and produced by Megan and Lachie Mannes, from the Mannes Desert Honey Store on Ilex Street at Red Cliffs.
Health benefits of honey are said to include boosting immunity, aiding digestion, helping soothe lingering coughs, and it can be great on pancakes, and Ms Mannes said the mix in the honey tap is popular, with the vat encouraging locals to recycle while getting their regular liquid gold fix.
“We call it a blend, it’s not blended, we think at the moment it’s mainly Mallee with a bit of red gum,” she said.
“So people can bring any container back, I don’t care if it’s a tub or an old tin or whatever, as long as it’s clean, I’ll fill it up.”
Ms Mannes said the Red Cliffs store was a culmination of two decades of work, with husband Lachie studying entomology after finishing high school and honey farming during his spare time.
“My husband studied bug science at university, and ended up back in Mildura after applying for every job as an entomologist, so that season is roughly from August to April when the bugs are very busy,” she said.
“His dad was a primary school teacher who kept bees for fun, so Lachie got interested in that, which was good for the off-season.
“He’s been doing honey for 20 plus years, and I was an English teacher at St Joe’s for 15 years, and was doing this on the weekends, and it just got really busy, so my side gig has become my main gig.”
The Mannes Desert Honey Store also stocks Ms Mannes home-made delicacies, such as tomato sauce, chutney, jam, and other preserves, making it a one-stop shop for everything delicious and locally sourced.
“Not everyone eats honey, so my passion, especially during COVID as we get a lot of fruit and veggies from growers that we work for, was to make jams and chutneys, which I’d been making for ages, as one of my daughters is a celiac,” she said.
“Over COVID I was given lots of weird and wonderful things like 20 kilos of zucchinis or cucumbers, and I’m like, what the hell am I going to do with these?
“So now the pickles and the normal tomato sauce, which is thick as I still hand spin it myself with a mouli that I started out with 15 years ago, are some of the top sellers.”
