Day of brewing
12.5 kg summer honey
25L of apple juice - about 22L from Ingrid Marie apples and 3 L from Pigion apples and a few "Ananas" apples.
2 tubes of Sweet Mead Wine Yeast from White Labs (WLP 720) liquid yeast.
Fermaid K
Pot Ash (Potassium Carbonate, K2CO3) - a baking ingredient
Salt of Hartshorn substitute (Ammonium Bicarbonate, NH4HCO3) - a baking ingredient
In the afternoon the liquid yeast was taken out of the refrigerator and left on the kitchen table to warm up to room temperature. This will "wake up" and prepare the yeast for the starter. According to White Labs the yeast should be ready in 3-6 hours.
In the evening it was time to prepare the must. Since I only have a 16L pot I had to split the apple juice in 3 portions. First 10L of apple juice was heated to 70C and was then taken off the heat. This should knock out microorganism growing in the apple juice. After about 10 min a bit more than half of the honey - approximately 7kg - was poured into the pot and stirred well to to dissolve the honey. The entire volume was then poured into the fermenter. I also checked the density of the apple juice before heating it up. It was about 48 Oechsle.
As the starter will be prepared from this first aliquot I need to do a few calculations. The final volume of the aliquot was about 10L+7kg / 1.4kg/L = 15L. So from the honey Oechsle equation I get an Oechsle value of m/(3*V) = 7000g/(3*15) = 156 Oe due to the honey and from the apple juice I get 48 Oe * 10L / 15 L = 32 Oe so in total about 188 Oe.
For the starter 400 ml was poured into a 2000 ml Erlenmeyer flask and diluted to 1600 ml. Oe of the starter should then be about 188 Oe / 1600ml * 400ml = 47 or somewhere in the range 45-50 which is just perfect. Unfortunately I forgot to measure this but I trust the estimate :o) After the dilution the temperature was almost just right: 28C, so the starter was covered with a paper towel and set to cool a bit more.
A second aliquot of 10 L apple juice was then poured into the pot, heated to 70C and left for 10 min. The rest of the honey was poured into the pot and the must was stirred well before being added to the fermenter
The third and final aliquot of 5 L apple juice was poured into the pot and heated to 70C and left for 10 min. then the apple juice was used to rinse the honey container several times to ensure that all the honey had been dissolved. This was then also added to the fermenter.
Fresh water was then added to 45L. As 25L of apple juice had an Oechsle value of about 48 and diluted to 45L that would contribute to about 48Oe*25L/45L]=26.7 Oechsle. From the honey-Oechsle equation the honey contributes with about Oe = m/(3*V) = 12500/(3*45) = 92,6 Oechsle. i.e. in total ~119 Oechsle. This will be checked when the must has cooled down.
About 6 hours after the yeast was removed from the refrigerator, it was time to add it to the starter. The temperature was 24C and both cylinders were added.
Now I will wait 2 days before the starter is added to the must and at this time the must should be at room temp.
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