Blackberry honey. Yes please. Here's another iteration of our intermittent blackberry-honey show mead, using a different yeast because our LHBS was out of WLP570 this time around. WLP530 is another Belgian ale yeast from White Labs, and one we've never successfully brewed with before: our only other attempt to use the yeast was in batch 093E, though the yeast there was expired and didn't begin fermentation before I gave in and pitched WLP570 into the must. This time it took off promptly, so I'm going to let it ferment out and see how the mead is.

This is not even arguably a BOMM under any relatively strict understanding of the term, since it doesn't use anything that's even a rough equivalent to Wyeast 1388, but I'm going to go ahead and call it Blackberry BOMM anyway.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2.95 lb blackberry honey from Bennett Honey Farm.
  • 1 tsp. Fermax yeast nutrient.
    • Note: No SNA planned for this batch.
  • untreated tap water to just over 1 gallon.
  • ½ packet White Labs WLP545 (Belgian Strong Ale) yeast, split with batch 148.
  • approx. ⅕ packet Super Kleer, added on 9 August 2019.

Procedure

Poured honey into the carboy through a funnel, then added yeast nutrient and water. Agitated, added more water to just over a gallon; agitated. Agitated obsessively and repeatedly and intermittently for over an hour, then measured the gravity and pitched the rehydrated yeast.

Brew date: 11 November 2018.
Original gravity: 1.106.
Bottling date: 30 October 2019
Final gravity: 1.012.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 13%.

Yield:

  • 7 x 500mL wine bottles

Total: 3.5 liters.

Observations

  • 2018-11-12T11:03: 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.