We’re back home after spending July up north.  And since we’ve got a few pounds of honey from Uncle John, why not make some mead?

Once it had enough time to mature, last year’s batch came out quite nicely.  Hardly even a faint hint of gym sock lingering.  So, this year we decided to change practically everything.  We did like the apple juice base, though, so it’s technically “cyser”.  And the results from last year gave us a pretty good idea of how much honey we wanted to use, but went with new juice (plain-jane Mott’s on sale) and yeast (Lalvin 71B).  We also varied the honey: one batch of Tupelo (which we’re calling Southern Cyser), one batch of molasses-like Everglades (Swamp Cyser), one batch with dark wildflower honey John gave us this year (Wild John Cyser), and one batch with a lighter honey John gave us last year (Old John Cyser).  We had a bigger jar of honey from last year, so we used more, pumping the gravity up to 25 Brix, so we hope it’ll finish dry and get to 12% ABV or so.

The Lalvin yeast is known for getting a quick start, and sure enough it was bubbling along first thing this morning less than 12 hours after pitching.  So with any luck, it won’t take too long to get there.