Mead of life: 2014 batch 3: Bochet (2)

Ingredients

Sweet Mead Wine Yeast (WLP 720)

144 g of spring honey

10.25 g of Fermaid K

18 g og MAP and 12 g of MAC

(Corresponding to 10 g of DAP)

10 g of Potash (K2CO3)
and of cause the 19+ L of Bochet must :o)

Initially the yeast was taken out of the refrigerator so that it could warm up for minimum 3 hours before being used.

As you might have noticed I saved some of the honey used for the bochet. This was for an yeast activator to prepare for fermentation. The 144 g of honey was dissolved in 800 ml of boiled water and the solution was covered and cooled to room temperature in the refrigerator. When the yeast was ready, 0.25g og Fermaid K was added, and the beaker was placed om my magnetic stirrer. The yeast was then added, and the beaker was covered.

I set it up Friday night and planned spiking the starter/activator to the bochet must Saturday night. Friday was also the day I did the "burning" of the honey.

Again I will use a SNA scheme to spike the nutrients. Though, I changed the SNA to 4 days instead of 5 because my currant mead had fermented so fast that I did not get to add the fifth aliquot. (See HERE and HERE). Otherwise the setup was pretty much the same:

1) Initially high addition of Fermaid K and slow decrease

2) Initially low addition MAC/MAP and then increasing

3) Initially low addion of potash (base) and then increasing as CO2 levels (acid) go up

In total I am adding:

281 ppm YAN

283 ppm Potassium

(See scheme in the next post)

Saturday night I did the standard measurements on the bochet must. It had an unpleasant thick dark foam covering the surface that has to be scraped aside to do the measurements: