Xenia and I brought home about seventy-five pounds of honey from our recent road trip to Colorado, and this is the first chance we've had to start a batch with some of that. We also picked up two bottles of chokecherry syrup without preservatives, so that's usable for brewing .... but I think I'm going to use that to backsweeten this batch. For now, I'm just going to call it Colorado Chokecherry Mead, but doubtless a better name will become apparent during fermentation.

This is also the first time we're reusing harvested yeast that's been stored in the refrigerator: this yeast is reused from the yeast from batch 054. I started a honey starter the night before to wake up the yeast for this batch.

Ingredients in this batch

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Chokecherry syrup for batch 068.

Two days before brew day, I pulled a Mason jar of harvested-and-rinsed WLP570 from the refrigerator and let it warm gradually to room temperature; the next afternoon, I made a honey starter at an approximate gravity of 1.040 (though I didn't measure it) by mixing the honey, nutrients, and water, then agitating for five minutes in a two-quart beer growler (from the wonderful Fieldwork in Berkeley, in fact). Poured in the yeast, then popped in a sanitized airlock and filled it with vodka. Set it on a table in a warmish room-temperature location. Twenty-six hours later, it was bubbling regularly, and so I went ahead and started brewing; the starter was eventually pitched about thirty hours after its own prep was finished.

Sanitized everything. Heated 1½ gallons of distilled water to 180℉ before I realized that very hot water will drive off taste and scent and that I really only want to make it easier to get the honey out of the single-use plastic one-gallon bucket, so I poured in 1 gallon of filtered tap water to bring the temperature down. When it cooled to 130℉, I poured in the bucket of honey and mixed vigorously to get a homogenous mixture. Poured a gallon of filtered tap water, then yeast energizer, yeast nutrient, and potassium carbonate into a five-gallon carboy. Poured the must into the water, resulting in about 4¼ gallons. Stirred quite vigorously with the long brewing spoon for fifteen minutes to oxygenate, then set the carboy, covered by a yellow T-shirt, into a bucket of water next to a fan. Covered the carboy and waited for the temperature of the must from 95℉ to 75℉, at which point I poured in the entire two-quarter honey starter from the night before (which had been bubbling merrily, thank you). Popped in an airlock, filled it with vodka, and watched for activity.

Performed additional nutrient additions on 12 and 18 June. Pulled the carboy out of the water bath on 18 June after performing final nutrient addition.

On 11 July 2017, racked the mead into a clean, sanitized six-gallon carboy, then cleaned the yeast out of the previous five-gallon carboy, but did not sanitize it: I'm just putting the same mead back into it, so anything in that carboy is already in the fermenting mead. Added the chokecherry syrup and additional water, then racked the mead back onto this addition. Popped the airlock back into the carboy and put it in a cool location. The gravity of the syrup itself was 1.300.

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Milky compound resulting from secret addition in batch 068B.

Brew date: 7 June 2017.
Original gravity: 1.110 (but we're treating this as if the O.G. were 1.108 to account for the starter and the chokecherry syrup).
Bottling day: 12 September 2017
Final gravity: 1.016
Estimated ABV: 12.5%

Yield:
  • Batch 068:
    • 1 x 1 L oz. IKEA Korken bottle
    • 1 x 750 mL swing-top beer bottle
    • 4 x 500 mL swing-top beer bottles
    • 19 x 12 fl. oz. beer bottles
    • hydrometer tube + tasting glass, totally about 10 fl. oz. of slop mead
  • Batch 068A:
    • 3 x 750 mL wine bottle, with 6 tsp. (ea.) special additive A
    • 2 x 500 mL beer bottles, with 6 tsp. (ea.) special additive A
    • 1 x 22 fl. oz. beer bottle, with 15 tsp. special additive A
    • 10 x 12 fl. oz. beer bottle, with 3 tsp. (ea.) special additive A

Total yield: approx. 615 fl. oz., or about 4.8 gal. (total for both sub-batches)

Observations

  • 2017-06-05T20:03: Pulled the harvested yeast out of the refrigerator.
  • 2017-06-06T16:17: Made the honey starter.
  • 2017-06-07T18:02: Started brewing.
  • 2017-06-08T14:11: There's bubbling in the carboy and the airlock.
  • 2017-06-12T17:00: Performed first nutrient addition.
  • 2017-06-18T20:49: Performed second nutrient addition. SG: 1.046. Pulled mead out of water bath to encourage the ferment to finish vigorously.
  • 2017-07-11: Added chokecherry syrup and water to the carboy. The syrup tinged the mead a pleasing red color, much like a tequila sunrise.
  • 2017-07-12: There's definitely carbon dioxide rising to the surface of the mead, though rather sluggishly so. I guess there's not all that much new sugar in the syrup, proportionally speaking.
  • 2017-07-16: The mead has lightened in color substantially: it's no longer fair to describe it as red, though it's certainly a much darker gold than it was before the chokecherry syrup was added.