Chippin' away at them writeups...

Batch 038, Taunt You a Second Time: Elderberry Mead, was one of my very favorite brews to date. I very rarely meet anything with elderberry in it that I don't love. This iteration uses the lovely avocado honey from Bennett's Honey Farm, and dried elderberries will go into secondary. This was brewed concurrently with batch 055, my gunpowder/avocado honey mead. Reference for the name, if you're not familiar.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2 lbs 9 oz (41 oz total) Bennett's avocado honey
  • 1 ½ tsp yeast nutrient
  • ½ tsp yeast energizer
  • Distilled water to 1 gallon
  • ½ batch of Lalvin 1116 wine yeast, rehydrated in ¼ cup of 104-degree water
  • 4 ounces of dried elderberries, added after four weeks

Process

This was a basic, throw-everything-in-a-carboy mead. Getting the honey dissolved in the water took forever; I'll consider heating part of the water slightly in future batches. Starting gravity was 1.082.

Observations

  • 2017-03-24T16:00:00: This mead is clarifying nicely as well. I plan to give it a few weeks before adding the elderberries.
  • 2017-04-10 (date approximate, because I never !@%^$# remember to date my notes): I added 4 ounces of elderberries, having learned from Batch 038 that 8 ounces is definitely too much. It looks like even this may still be a generous amount; I'll try 2 or 3 ounces next time. I did not bother racking as the yeast had already settled out neatly into a compact layer at the bottom. The elderberries immediately turned the mead that lovely shade of goth-novel wine, but fermentation did not restart noticeably.
  • 2017-06-05T16:00:00: The mead finished at SG 1.014, or around 10.3%. (Full disclosure: I don't think my math here considered any fermentables provided by the dried elderberries, but that likely shouldn't make a colossal difference.) I now have another eight bottles of elderberry mead haunting the cupboards, and life is slightly more delightful because of it.