Another shot at a bochet, since our first attempt was no particularly wonderful success. (Though neither was it terrible, to be fair. Still, I'd like to do better.)

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2.2 lb orange blossom honey from Bennett's Honey Farm, moderately caramelized by heating, covered, for 130 minutes in our Crock-Pot on high.
  • 1.8 lb orange blossom honey from Bennett's Honey Farm, uncaramelized.
  • untreated tap water to just over 1 gallon.
  • ½ tsp. Wyeast beer yeast nutrient.
    • ½ tsp. Fermaid K, added late, on 8 Sept 2018.
  • ½ packet Lalvin 71B-1122 wine yeast, rehydrated in ½ cup untreated tap water at 95℉, and split with batch 138.
  • approx. ⅕ packet Super Kleer, added on 9 August 2019.

Procedure

Heated a little over two pounds of honey in the Crock-Pot for a little over two hours. Poured in enough honey to bring the total to four pounds, then cooled further by adding some warm water when the temperature dropped. Poured into a carboy with some water already in it, then added yeast nutrient and water to just over a gallon. Agitated obsessively and repeatedly and intermittently for over an hour, then measured the gravity and pitched the yeast.

Brew date: 30 August 2018.
Original gravity: 1.120.
Bottling date: 30 September 2019
Final gravity: 1.055.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 9%.

Yield:

  • 7 x 500mL wine bottles

Total: 3.5 liters.

Observations

  • 2018-08-31T10:49: There's already plenty of bubbling in the carboy.
  • 2019-08-09: Added approximately one-fifth of the first packet of Super Kleer to the carboy.
  • 2019-09-30: Bottled, yielding three and a half liters of mead.