A member of our brewing club notified me that he had a line on a bourbon barrel for the club and wanted to know if I would be interested in one for myself. I jumped at the chance. I'd been wanting to do a variation on a buckwheat mead aged in a bourbon barrel for a long time. I had absolutely NO
idea what I was getting into. On the day it arrived, I met him in the parking lot at his work and together we hoisted the barrel into my VW camper van. I shoved some scraps of wood on either side to keep it from rolling around and took off for home and whatever lie ahead of me.
The Batch
This 60 gallon batch was split into two 30 batches (due to equipment limitations). The information that follows is for EACH 30 gallon batch. The barrel is 55 gallons, so I planed to reserve the 5 remaining gallons for topping up the barrel.
The Recipe- 96lbs Orange Blossom honey
- 20lbs Buckwheat honey
- 25grams Potassium Carbonate
- 60grams Lalvin 71B yeast
- 75grams GoFerm
- 54.6grams Fermaid K
- 54.6grams DAP
Target OG 1.140
Target FG 1.010 - 1.030 (I can blend or back sweeten if necessary.
Making the Must
We were using buckets of honey, so we dumped about half a bucket of honey into a spare bucket and added approximately 1/2 - 1 gallon of hot water. We stirred the honey and water with a drill attachment mixer (works very well for this) until it was well blended. Then we dumped it into the fermenter. We used hot water and a high-temp, long handled spatula to scrape all the remaining honey from the bucket.
When all the honey was added, we topped up the fermenter to 30 gallons with cool water. Then we added 25g (5g per 6 gallons) of potassium carbonate. Here were our results.
Batch 1
SG - 1.142
pH - 4.86
must temp - 79.5F
Batch 2
SG - 1.138
pH - 4.83
must temp - (did not take reading)
Note: All the water used (unless otherwise specified) has been filtered using an in-line charcoal filter.
Note: We had approximately 2/3 bucket (about 40lbs) of buckwheat honey available and approximately 6 lbs of additional orange blossom honey (from a leftover batch) that we used. That is how we came up with 20 lbs of buckwheat and 96 (1 1/2 buckets + 6 lbs) lbs of orange blossom.
Fermentation
We had a very vigorous fermentation. The must looked like it was in a slow boil. We captured a video of it because we couldn't believe our eyes. The video is at the website below. The final gravity of the two batches was 1.032 and 1.026. When blended it put us right at the high end of our estimates. Total ABV measured about 15%.
Tasting Note
The flavor is not as sweet as you would imagine with a FG of 1.030. It is very well balanced by the alcohol and is not syrupy. This mead has a good amount of body.
There is definitely a lot of alcohol harshness, but it's still very young. I am also picking up a very strong flavor from the buckwheat honey. It is more than I was hoping for. However, I do know from experience that the buckwheat harshness will subside with extensive aging. I was already expecting to age this mead for about 2 years (maybe in the barrel, maybe not), so my hope is that when it's ready to bottle the buckwheat will be a subtle side note to add complexity. The kind of thing that you won't exactly be able to put your finger on, but would definitely notice if it wasn't there.
One thing's for sure, it is already picking up a very nice bourbon flavor that is blending well with the earthy flavors and aromas of the buckwheat honey. I'm not certain how long I'll keep it on the barrel, so I'll just have to taste it each time I top it up. What a great hobby. :)
You can read more about this batch at http://forum.allaboutmead.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11
Brad Dahlhofer
B. Nektar Meadery
