I'm making BOMMs soon. Anyone have any tips? For yeast I need to choose between CBC-1 and Abbeye. I'm more leaning toward the Abbeye, but I'm not 100% sure. I just bought a few kg's of honey (normal multiblossom) and I have the water ready. Anyone have any tips with BOMMs?
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My first BOMMs - Recipes
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OK so nevermind, I came right. I'll be using Abbaye yeast for sure. It provides a fuller body.
On the recipe, I'm not making a BOMM anymore. I'll be building my own mead with my own recipe, doing a batch of around 10l at an alcohol content of around 10%. That means building it to a specific gravity of around 1.08, using 2.5kg of honey with around 8.5l of water. Fermentation will be in my normal fermenter (as opposed to the bottles the BOMM recommends), and after fermenting I'll be splitting the batch back into the bottles, stabilize, backsweeten, fine, cold crash and sit for a week or two before bottling. One bottle will be backsweetened with honey and the other with fruit juice concentrate. I'm thinking apple and cranberry. Final alcohol content bottled will be around 9%, and both flavours are aiming for a "sweet" mead. Not desert wine sweet, but more like a natural sweet wine.
I'll post pics and things after the weekend!
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HI, yeah sorry, although I've looked at some mead vids during the years, I can't supply any proper info as I have not tried my hand at any. Since honey is the price of gold here in SA, I also dont think i will any time soon.
Best of luck.!The Problem With The World Is That Everyone Is A Few Drinks Behind.!
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Originally posted by JIGSAW View PostHI, yeah sorry, although I've looked at some mead vids during the years, I can't supply any proper info as I have not tried my hand at any. Since honey is the price of gold here in SA, I also dont think i will any time soon.
Best of luck.!
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All right, so these aren't BOMMs, but all indications show it'll end up really nicely. Here's my method I used on Saturday afternoon:
1. Placed the bottles of honey (2.375kg in total) in a bucket and covered them with boiling water. This was to get the honey nice and runny.
2. Went for a walk with the dogs since No.1 was bound to take some time.
3. Took some cooled down, previously boiled water (normal tap water as per recommendations) at around 45°C and put it into a sterilized glass jar. TOSNA 2.0 protocal called for the water to be at 40°C, but then I checked the yeast package and saw it mention water temp between 30°C and 35°C, so I popped the jar in the freezer for a minute to get the water to 35°C. Sprinkled the yeast over the water and let it sit.
4. Poured the honey into the fermenter and added 5l of cooled down spring water to dissolve. This went REALLY easily.
5. Heated up some water on the stove and dissolved 1kg of dextrose into the hot water. It dissolved quite a bit easier than I was expected. A few swirls with the brewing spoon and it was dissolved. Poured this into the fermented with the honey must and stirred.
6. Topped up the fermenter with spring water to the 12l mark. Stirred the crap out of the must to aerate and mix it properly.
7. Took a gravity reading. 1.091. Not too high, but around the mark I was aiming for. With 85% sugar content in the honey, it perfectly matches up to the GotMead Calculator.
8. Poured the must from the hydrometer tube into the yeast slurry to acclimate the yeast a little bit. This was around 15 minutes after first rehydrating the yeast. At this stage I noticed that some of the yeast made a little clump in the middle of the jar, so I gave it a good but gentle swirl to get all the yeast wet before adding the must to the mix.
9. Added some more must to the slurry 5 minutes later, slowly tapping it off from the fermenter and constantly and slowly swirling the slurry to give it a good mix.
10. Pitched the slurry into the must around 25 minutes after first rehydrating. Also added a half teaspoon of Fermaid O.
11. Closed up the fermenter, fitted the airlock and placed the fermenter in a cooler box, and packed in a few ice packs to cool the must down (around 25°C at pitch).
Right now the fermenter is fluctuating a bit in temperature (hot during the day, cold at night), so I keep regulating the temps between 17°C and 20°C with ice packs and a large towel to keep the cool in and the light out. This morning, 36 hours after pitching the yeast it's not yet actively fermenting, but there's definitely something happening. There's a stronger yeasty smell, which is taken over by the sweet honey scent when the must is stirred and sloshed. There's also a slight foam forming on the top, which looks like the yeast starting to get active. Airlock activity is still negligible, but it is slowly starting to push through some CO2 (but not enough to bubble yet), so something is happening. Planning on giving this one a low and slow ferment, and I'm REALLY looking forward to it!
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Right so after pitch this went dead quiet. It was seriously worried about this since there was no airlock activity and very little evidence of an active fermentation - even 3 days after pitching. As a result, I took out the cool packs from the cooler box around the fermenter and let it heat up a bit. It hit 24°C and there it sat for a few hours - still "nothing".
So I got the advice to ignore the airlock (rookie mistake) and take a gravity reading. Took one on Tuseday evening, and yes, that Abbaye yeast is incredible. It's been eating through the sugars without producing enough CO2 to actually move the airlock. It was down to 1.080 and I'm HAPPY. It's working like it should. Cooled it down a bit and now it's happily purring along - without moving the airlock like it's supposed to. Gravity test last night was at 1.075 so the cooler temps really is hampering the yeast from doing it's job in a timely fashion. I've therefore abandoned the 18°C fermenting temp and I'm trying my utmost to keep it around 20°C~22°C now. It seems to then eat around 10 gravity points a day, which means I'll hit 1/3rd sugar break tonight and I'll be done fermenting in a week's time.
Smell is GOOD, rich honey notes with no off flavours or smells. Taste is still VERY sweet, but last night I could taste that the sweetness is starting to fade out a bit and that classic honey flavour is starting to come through. It's working!
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Originally posted by that guy al View Postfor anyone interested, brotherbeeshoney in cape town sells bulk honey for about 60 bucks a kg.
On the mead note - gravity is sloooooowly dropping. I don't think this yeast is too happy with a cooler fermentation, to be honest. Last night I managed to get the temps stable at around 20°C again, and over 8 hours it only ate through a measly 5 gravity points. I also think the carbonation and the shitty test tube I have to measure the gravity in is causing havoc on the accuracy of my readings, so I need to fine a new tube or method to test it. The tube is just not working, there's not enough movement around the hydrometer, IMO. I think from now on I'll just drop the hydrometer in the fermenter and test it in there (after sanitizing).
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Originally posted by that guy al View Postfor anyone interested, brotherbeeshoney in cape town sells bulk honey for about 60 bucks a kg.
Size Product Price Inc VAT
8g -> Sachet -> R1.8
8g -> 20 x 8g Sachets -> R38
40g -> Gift Jar -> R9
150g -> Gift Jar -> R19
375g -> Easy Squeeze -> R40
24x375g -> Easy Squeeze -> R936
500g -> Easy Squeeze -> R50
24x500g -> Easy Squeeze -> R1,176
500g -> Glass Jar -> R52
1kg -> Easy Squeeze -> R90
12x1kg -> Easy Squeeze -> R1,068
7kg -> Tub -> R553
28kg -> Bucket -> R2,184
1kg -> Bulk (Fill your own) -> R77
So cheapest is bring your own, R77 per kg. 7kg bucket works out to R79 per kg. Not "holy crap" cheap, but cheap nonetheless.
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It still means it's A LOT cheaper to make your own than to buy commercial mead in South Africa. It seems that ~R160 a bottle is commonplace, and then it's a relatively plain mead (like I'm making now). I can make it for a third or even a quarter of that price (more gets cheaper) - just need some time. Anyway.
Gravity down to 1.064. We've been having some really cold weather so the fermenter is slightly lower in temps, around 20°C again (which was my originally planned temperature). Fermentation is still active and healthy - although it's a bit slow. The full flavour of honey is slowly taking preference to sweetness when I taste test, and it's going well. No off smells at all, no sulphur, no fusels, nothing else except honey. The candy sweetness from the dextrose is also almost completely gone by now, which I'm VERY happy for.
TL;DR: It's going great.
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