The California orange blossom honey from Bennett's in Fillmore, CA, is hands down the loveliest honey I've ever found. I've brewed with it in the past, including batch 146: Turtleneck and Chain, one of my very favorite batches. When Patrick's sister Erin lugged a 5-gallon bucket of this incredible honey from SoCal to the Twin Cities for us in 2022, a plain varietal batch was the #1 thing I wanted to make. This batch is a little sweeter than prior iterations, so the gorgeously fragrant honey really gets to shine.

I (re-)read a ton of Terry Pratchett in 2023, so when I bottled this batch on New Year's Day 2024, I named it after the Chair of Indefinite Studies, a wizard of questionable expertise at Unseen University.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 15 lbs Bennett's orange blossom honey
  • 1½ tsp Fermaid K
  • 1½ tsp Fermaid O
  • Saint Paul tap water to 5 gallons
  • 1 pack of Lalvin 1122 yeast, rehydrated

Process

Stirred everything together, aerated, and pitched. I racked this batch once or twice, left it the hell alone, and finally bottled it on Jan 1, 2024. Starting gravity was 1.104; with final gravity at 1.008, that puts the ABV at 12.6%.