Just before the COVID-19 pandemic brought the planet to a grinding halt, Patrick and I made a fabulous road trip to the South Carolina coast. Major stops along the way included St. Louis, Louisville, Atlanta, and Asheville, and we came back with a whopping 87 pounds of honey, according to P's calculations. Batches 197 and 198 are my first pair of brews with two of these honeys. This orange blossom from a honey farm in Tennessee purports to come from the "orange groves at Avon Park, FL." It's the lightest, most translucent honey I've ever brewed with; by comparison, the North Carolina OB in batch 198 was a dense amber, and quite frankly a tastier honey. This should come out bone dry, which I'm hoping will work well with this honey. The name is, of course, a nod to the best thing Florida has ever given us: a mediocre meme.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2 lbs 4 oz Florida orange blossom honey from Strange Honey Farm in Del Rio, TN
  • 1/3 tsp Fermaid K
  • 1/4 tsp Fermaid O, added on 4/5/20
  • ½ batch of Lalvin 1122 wine yeast, rehydrated in ¼ cup of water; the other half went in batch 198

Process

Tossed everything in a carboy, agitated, and pitched. I freely admit I didn't bother reading gravity here. We were out of Fermaid O on brew day, so I added it once the shipment arrived a week later.

I bottled this batch on 8/2. I didn't take a final gravity reading; all of these batches are around 12% to 13%. This holds the distinction of being the single blandest orange blossom batch I've made so far, and I'm just about done with Florida OB at this point. While batch 198, my North Carolina OB, is fragrant and gorgeous, this one has close to no aroma at all. God dammit, Florida.