A quick dry show mead, to be oaked, using sweet (yet tart) blueberry honey. Brewed after Schramm's recipe for a dry show mead on page 163 of The Compleat Meadmaker.

I'm calling this batch A Long Expected Party after the opening chapter of The Lord of the Rings, which involves a specific interest n the batch number for this batch.

Ingredients in this batch

  • approx. 10 lb. blueberry honey from Bennett's Honey Farm.
  • 1 tsp. Fermax yeast nutrient.
  • dechlorinated tap water to 5 gal.
  • Addition of 14 November 2018:
    • 1 tsp. Fermax yeast nutrient.
  • Addition of 16 November 2018:
    • 1 tsp. Fermaid O.
  • 2 oz. French oak chips soaked in Real McCoy 3-year rum for six months, then added into the carboy on 11 February 2019.
  • 1 cup Bennett's blueberry honey dissolved in one cup warm water, added as priming sugar on 25 May 2019.

Procedure

Heated a gallon and a half or so of dechlorinated tap water and poured in the honey, erroneously re-taring the scale during the process, so that the honey amount is an estimate. Poured some dechlorinated water into the sanitized carboy, then poured the hot must into it. Added Fermax, then topped off to five gallons and set the carboy outside to cool in the cold air. Brought it back in and pitched the yeast, which had been rehydrated previously.

Brew date: 11 November 2018.
Original gravity: 1.071.
Bottling date: 25 May 2019
Final gravity: 0.994.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 10¼%.

Yield:

  • 41 x 12 oz. beer bottles.
  • 4 x 22 oz. beer bottles.
  • 2 x 375mL beer bottles.
  • 1 x 750mL beer bottle.
  • 1 x 500mL beer bottle.
  • Approx. 8 oz. leftover mead.

Total: Approx. 650 fl. oz., or 5.12 gallons.

Observations

  • 2018-11-13T17:41: There's finally initial carbon dioxide production in the carboy.
  • 2018-11-14T20:00: Added 1 tsp. Fermax to the carboy.
  • 2018-11-16T22:17: Added 1 tsp. Fermaid O to the carboy.
  • 2019-02-11: Added 2 oz. French oak chips soaked 6 months in three-year Real McCoy rum to the carboy.
  • 2019-03-20: Racked to a new sanitized bucket, leaving behind the oak chips.
  • 2019-05-25: Mixed a cup of blueberry honey into a cup of warm water, poured into a sanitized bucket, and racked the mead onto the new honey, then bottled, yielding just over 5 gallons of mead at just over 10% ABV.