Mesquite honey is one of my favorite varietals, and yes, I still find it amusing that I now have Opinions(TM) about honey varietals. I wanted a large plain batch of this delicious honey to keep around. The honey I used is darker and stronger than other mesquite honeys I've used.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 1 gallon (12 lbs) of mesquite honey from Moon Shine Trading Company
  • 2 tsp Fermaid O
  • 1 1/2 tsp Fermaid K
  • 1 pack Lalvin QA23
  • 1 pound Bennett's sage honey, added for backsweetening sometime in April or May
  • Batch 186b: 2 branches of fresh, homegrown rosemary
  • Batch 186c: 1 generous Tbsp of fresh, homegrown lemon thyme

Process

Mixed, aerated, pitched. SG was 1.084.

Once fermentation was done, I found that I just don't like this particular mesquite honey very much. It just doesn't taste as pleasant or interesting as other mesquites I've used in the past. I backsweetened with a pound of sage honey because it had gotten too dry, then split the batch into three.

186a: Mr. Nancy (Plain Mesquite/Sage Varietal)

Two gallons of the batch went into batch 191, my future prickly pear melomel. 186a, Mr. Nancy, is the plain varietal, named after Anansi's elderly incarnation in Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys. I bottled this sub-batch on 6/26/20 and racked the remaining mead off the yeast.

186b: Fat Charlie (Mesquite/Sage Varietal with Rosemary)

For 186b, I added two branches of fresh rosemary from my porch garden. Fat Charlie, of course, is Anansi's son in the same book, and no, this arachnophobe is not about to use the name of the other son, Spider, as a batch name.

186c: Thyme Traveler's Wife (Mesquite/Sage Varietal with Lemon Thyme)

186c got a large tablespoon of fresh lemon thyme from my porch garden. It's called Thyme Traveler's Wife, because a) I loved the book and b) I will never skip an opportunity for a thyme pun.

I bottled batches 186b and 186c on 8/15. I didn't take a final gravity reading; like most of my unfruited meads, they should come in around 12% to 13%. The herbs came out perfectly in both batches, especially the lemon thyme.