Earlier this year, Patrick and I visited Jack Creek Farms near Paso Robles and sampled their honeys. We picked up two sinfully expensive 12-oz bottles of a honey labeled Black Gold, a deliciously dark and molasses-y varietal. It's been burning a hole in my pocket ever since. Hoping that batch 023 will come out very dark, I'm naming it for one of my standing goth-wench phrases, Like My Soul. This was brewed on Friday, 9/16, after a hell of a long week.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 12 oz. Jack Creek Farms Black Gold honey
  • 1 lb 8 oz. Kirkland clover honey; that's right, we're breaking out the fancy stuff here
  • ½ tsp. each of Valley Brewers yeast nutrient and yeast energizer
  • About ⅓ of a packet of Lalvin 71B-1122 white wine yeast

Yield: Nine 12-oz bottles or so - approximately .85 gallons..

I started the yeast in a quarter cup of 102°F water and wound up splitting it between three 1-gallon batches: this one, Patrick's batch 024, and my own batch 025. I was using up what was left of a 5-lb bottle of Kirkland honey, so I used about 2 cups of 110°F water to get the last bits out of both honey containers. I added the nutrient, energizer, and unchilled, filtered water to make 1 gallon, then aerated the must for 10 minutes by capping and shaking the carboy. (The must was very nearly black and looked like delicious espresso with the foam on top.) Pitched the yeast and inserted the airlock.

Original gravity: 1.088 at 78°F (1.090 with temperature correction).

Final gravity: 1.000 at 64°F (1.002 with temperature correction) for an ABV of approximately 11.6%.

Observations

  • 2016-09-17T10:00:00: The batch is fermenting away without a hitch.
  • 2016-09-18T15:00:00: As of this morning, the must has gone from nearly black to dark brown. I'm hoping that this is simply due to cloudiness from the yeast and that it'll clarify back to its gorgeous original color.
  • 2016-12-04T20:00:00: We bottled Like My Soul tonight. The mead had gone back to a nearly black hue in the carboy, but only looks medium brown in a glass. It still tastes hot, but I think it's going to be tasty. This mead finished fairly dry at 1.000 FG.