Upkeep

It was fun having a whole bunch of new batches going at the same time - the sounds of the airlocks were really nice. Like I had a jacuzzi in my living room :-D

Today I slightly belatedly added the thyme honey to Zaqar and the rosemary honey to Aella. Since there wasn't enough headroom, I combined their deplaced volume in a 1 liter bottle:

Diminutive - which I added a couple of spoons of yuzu marmelade to, a splash of yuzu juice, and a big spoon of the pine honey that has that surprising same-sensation-as-date-syrup flavour. Not for any real reason than that it was the only easily accessible jar of honey I had around, the rest of my current stash is in the bucket.

Bronwyn (5L)

Coffee bochet. Rather than reproducing the previous I thought I'd see how this works out with caramellised honey.
2.5 kilo honey cooked down to medium toasted.
Cold brew of 60 gr fancy coffee grounds. (possibly a bit on the strong side? figured I'd need to up it slightly to weigh up against the bochet flavour)
Mead yeast. 

Seems off to a good start.  No starting gravity because I'm a dope

Calliope (5L)

Cacao bochet. I'm also going to make a 20L batch plain cacao mead, but I wanted to give this a try. 
2.5 kilo honey cooked down to medium toasted
150 gr Dutch cacao
mead yeast

This is more likely 6 liter or even 6.5 - it's in a bucket now and I wanted to make sure I'd have enough volume left once it comes off the primary sludge. I'll leave it in the bucket for now to avoid gross foamy disaster, but it's blopping away enthusiastically

No starting gravity because I'm a dope

 

Given that the honey cooked down to about half volume I figure both of these will need serious backsweetening, potentially with more caramellised honey, but I can see about that later. 

New brewings

 I seem to have lapsed on actually naming batches - the lapsang and pinetips batches still don't have names. Lots of plans to start new things this week so I really should think of some.

New:

• Zaqar 1750 gr honey / mead yeast / to be backsweetened with the ~450 gr thyme honey I've had standing around for the past century
  
  
• Aella: 1500 gr honey / mead yeast / to be backsweetened with the 900 gr rosemary honey I've had standing around for the past century
  
  
• Fennah II: 2000 gr honey / mead yeast / to be flavoured with fresh mint in secondary.  

Here's the rest of the planning list: