This fall we get to attend my old friend Carrie's wedding in far NorCal. Several friends and family members are bringing homebrews to the reception, so Carrie and her husband-to-be, Will, requested a mead from us. Since this is an outdoor party and people will be traveling, I'm aiming to make this one substantially lower ABV than our standard meads. I'm hoping to come in around 7%, and I may add water and/or kill fermentation and backsweeten to achieve this. I may also add hibiscus to part of this batch.

Starter (June 27)

  • 8 oz Bennett's cactus honey
  • ½ tsp Fermax
  • < ⅛ tsp Fermaid K
  • Water to ½ gallon
  • 2 oz fermenting must from Patrick's batch 068, which used harvested WLP570 Belgian golden ale yeast from batch 054

Ingredients in this batch (July 2)

  • 7.5 lbs Bennett's cactus honey, for a total of 8 lbs
  • 4 ½ tsp Fermax, added in three 1 1/2-tsp increments
  • ⅓ tsp Fermaid K
  • 2/3 filtered, 1/3 distilled water, partially heated
  • The starter above
  • An accidental addition of ½ pack of WLP001, which was supposed to go into batch 079 instead; don't talk and brew, my friends

Process

Mixed the honey with some warm water, topped up with cold water, and added the first round of nutrients. Starting gravity was 1.062.

Observations

  • 2017-07-03T20:00:00: Fermenting away!