After one year, eight months, and ten days, the last of my noob meads was ready to bottle. This mead was my second attempt with local (San Diego) Bontia honey, 17.5 pounds to be exact. The starting gravity was off the charts, (1.130 or so) and the finishing gravity was 1.021. It was a rather bittersweet bottling process for today me because it was my first homebrewing experience in my new residence which reminded me of all the great times I had with my best friend and fiance in our old place at Porte La Paz.

Flash back to 2004. I had been brewing for nearly five months averaging about one batch every two weeks. I recall it was the last imperial stout adventure (that's another story) that got me thinking about simplicity. So, I picked up the bible ( Papazian, "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing") and read about making honey mead. As it happend, I was down near my local homebrew store and I decided to go for it. I went straight to Smart and Final and purchased 10 pounds of the cheapest honey they had to offer, and it's still not cheap! I then grabbed some White Labs Sweat Mead (WLP720) yeast and headed for home. The mead I made that day turned out as one would expect, drinkable, mildly flavorful, yet not very interesting. I knew that the problem was the honey, so for the next round, I looked up a local bee keeper and asked for honey. I lucked out, and he had 40 pounds left. I bought it up at $1.25 per pound and made two batches. This was the start of my second mead adventure...

The brew process for this mead was a short 10 minute boil followed by a 1 month primary fermentation. At that point, I raked to the secondary and added some fermaid K. The secondary fermentation lasted nearly 1 year at the end of which, I added a healthy culture of White Labs champagne yeast. After another week or so, the yeast quit around 1.031 and I racked to the ternary fermenter.

This is a very strong and sweet mead, yellow to white gold in color with sage, pine, and a bit or cedar aroma. The feel is think and soft with some slightly acidity on the tongue. The taste is full of honey up front with lingering citrus and mango aftertaste.