Back in May, when we were visiting the Boulder farmers market, we picked up three three-pound jars of honey from Bee Chama Honey. The honey was delicious at the time, but I can't say that I care for their labeling system: their web site has a magic decoder card that maps symbols written on top of the lid onto honey varietals. In theory, anyway. In practice, even though I accepted this claim at face value during our interaction at the farmers market, it turns out that (a) the magic decoder card handed to me at the farmers market doesn't quite exactly match the one on their website; (b) one of the honeys I bought had a symbol on the top lid that didn't appear on either card (edit: turns out later that it's snowberry varietal honey); and (c) another jar of honey had a symbol that only appeared on the web site, so I'm rather glad I lost the magic decoder card and went to see if their web site would help. Too bad it didn't help more: batch 085 is being made with unknown-varietal honey from Bee Chama.

But that's not this batch: this batch had an ⓧ on top, which, according to the magic decoder card, means it has blackberry honey in it. In honor of this entire semiotic clusterfuck, I'm just going to call this particular batch ⓧ, after the symbol on top of the lid.

2017-11-24_20_46_59_1
Bee Chama honey for batch 084, batch 085, and batch 086.

Ingredients in this batch

Sanitized everything, then poured the honey in through a funnel. Followed this with the Fermaid O, Fermaid K, and potassium carbonate. Poured in water to total level of just over one gallon in the carboy. Agitated for five minutes to oxygenate. Pulled off enough to take a hydrometer reading, taking the volume down to exactly a gallon, Put a third of a packet of yeast in, attempting to share the yeast equally with Batch 085 and Batch 086. I'm experimenting with allowing the must to continue oxygenating as the yeast goes through the reproductive cycle, so instead of putting in an airlock, I covered the carboy neck with a piece of aluminum foil molded to the shape of the neck to allow oxygen and carbon dioxide to move back and forth while (hopefully) keeping out any unpleasant bugs that might get in and outcompete the yeast.

Brew date: 24 November 2017.
Original gravity: 1.106.
Bottling date: 17 October 2017
Final gravity: 1.024.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 12.5%.

Yield:

  • 6 x 12 oz. bottles
  • 2 x 22 oz. bottles
  • ~6 oz. hydrometer tube

Total: 122 fl. oz., or just over 95% of a gallon.

Observations

  • 2017-11-27T17:14: Replaced the foil cover on the carboy with an air lock. There's clearly vigorous carbon dioxide production: that airlock is bubbling like mad.
  • 2017-11-30T02:40: Checked the gravity: Still 1.085! No nutrient addition at this time. Mead is clearly fermenting quite visibly still, with a lot of tiny bubbles in the must sample. Poured mead from hydrometer tube back into carboy: yeast activity is hopefully vigorous enough to make this more or less safe at this point. Still plenty of airlock activity, too.
  • 2018-01-03T21:47: Finally added a (very late) partial nutrient addition to the carboy, hoping that doing so will (a) do some good, and (b) not result in taste artifacts. Sigh. Life has been busy this last month, and that just fell off my radar.
  • 2018-01-06T05:02: Took a few fluid ounces of mead from the carboy and added it to batch 093E, hoping to jump-start fermentation. Mead smells sour, probably from nutrient starvation. This one is probably going to have to sit for a while.
  • 2018-02-04T17:10: Bottled and capped with purple caps, resulting in eight various-sized bottles at about 11.5% ABV. WOW, this came out tasty. Sweet and blackberry-flavored. This is the blackberry mead I've been trying to make all along. Oh man. (Though it certainly did come out cloudy. Maybe a low-heat instead of no-heat method if I brew with their honey again?)