Another honey acquisition from our recent trip to Colorado: we picked up some salt cedar (or tamarisk) honey. It's delicious: dark and rich. After primary fermentation is done, there's going to be some peppers going into the carboy, I think. Since it's another BOMM-based mead, I'm going to call this Tamarisk Hand Grenade.

Ingredients in this batch

Sanitized everything, then poured the salt cedar honey in through a funnel. Followed this with the Fermax, Fermaid K, K₂CO₃, and then the clover honey. Poured in water to total about a gallon in the carboy. Agitated for five minutes to oxygenate. Pulled off enough to take a hydrometer reading, taking it down to almost exactly a gallon. Pulled off a single turkey baster's worth of fermenting, yeasty mead from batch 068, which contains White Labs's Belgian Golden Strong yeast (WLP570), at which time the temperature of the must was 75℉, and dropped the must from batch 068 into this carboy. Popped in a fermentation lock and filled it to the line with vodka. Set the carboy on a shelf to ferment.

Brew date: 19 June 2017.
Original gravity: 1.119.
Bottling date: 17 October 2017
Final gravity: 1.008.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 16%.

Yield:

  • 3 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 2 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x 500 mL beer bottles
  • a hydrometer tube's worth of mead

Total: 113 fl. oz., or about 88% of a gallon.

Observations

  • 2017-06-20T22:54: No visible carbon dioxide production in the carboy.
  • 2017-06-21: There's carbon dioxide production in the carboy.
  • 2017-06-26: Performed first nutrient addition.
  • 2017-07-02: Performed second nutrient addition. Pulled carboy out of the water bath and set on a shelf.
  • 2017-10-17T20:53: Bottled, yielding about seven-eighths of a gallon at about 16% ABV.