While passing through Espanola, NM on my birthday trip earlier this year, we spotted a "Honey" sign by the side of the road. I pulled over and found an older gentleman selling local wildflower honey out of the back of his truck. This mead uses that honey and, cleverly!, that image too. It's a fragrant, lovely wildflower honey with a more complex aroma than most. This is the last of three batches with Omega's Jovaru Lithuanian farmhouse yeast.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2 lbs 3 oz wildflower honey from northern New Mexico
  • Scant 1/4 tsp Wyeast yeast nutrient
  • 1/5 of a pack of Omega Yeast OYL-033 Jovaru Lithuanian farmhouse yeast
  • 3/4 tsp Fermaid O, added on 10/20 to help fermentation along

Process

Mixed, aerated, pitched. SG was 1.074.

I bottled this batch on 3/22/20, during the "social distancing" quasi-quarantine. Like the other two batches with Omega Jovaru, this one came out hazy and opaque, but the honey's amazing fragrance comes through in the final mead. Final gravity was 0.998 for a 10% ABV; due to the honey's intensity, the mead tastes way sweeter than it actually is.