Another varietal resulting from our grand road trip this spring. Cotton honey was new to me and tastes very sweet and unusual. I picked up a small container from some friendly people at a tiny farmers' market in Lubbock, TX.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 1.25 lbs cotton honey from Hamilton Farms in Lubbock, TX
  • About 1.75 lbs of Kirkland clover honey
  • ⅛ tsp Wyeast yeast nutrient, plus scant ½ tsp on 5/18
  • Denver tap water to 1 gallon
  • ½ pack of Lalvin 71B-1122 wine yeast

Process

I added more clover honey here than I really meant to, and wound up with SG of 1.112. Whoops. Trusty 1122 wine yeast chewed through all that sugar like a champ, but a month in, this mead was still quiiiite sweet. The cotton honey really comes through though.

I wound up bottling this mead on 7/16. Final gravity was 1.004, giving us a 14% ABV and a ton of cotton character. I proudly named the mead Everybody Knows after one of my (many) favorite Leonard Cohen songs.</div>