We've been chatting with and learning from the wonderful Deborah at Queen Bee Brews, Denver's first meadery. This summer we went in on a group honey order and acquired some star thistle honey from Sleeping Bear Farms in Michigan. This is a totally new honey for us left coasters; it's light, sweet, and lovely. One more batch from my summer series of honey varietal meads. And of course it needed a nerdy name.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2.75 lbs Sleeping Bear Farms star thistle honey
  • ¼ tsp beer yeast nutrient
  • ⅓ batch Lalvin 1122 yeast, rehydrated

Process

Mixed this up on 8/30 with an SG of 1.092. I bottled this batch on 2/18 with a final gravity of 1.004 for a calculated ABV of 11.55%. It came out decently, but not impressively clear, and it's a bit sweeter than I generally like, but I think it works well with the type of honey.