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. I picked up this orange blossom at a farmer's market in Asheville on my birthday. It's a dark amber for orange blossom, but it's a fragrant, lovely honey. The name is a nod to one of my favorite Beautiful South songs, which was stuck in my head for about half of this trip.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2 lbs 13 oz orange blossom honey from Baker Beeyards in Hickory, NC
  • 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 8/15. I didn't take a final gravity reading; all of these batches are around 12% to 13%. This one has massive orange blossom fragrance and is extremely lovely.