Nov 05: Now that the honey is harvested, time to squeeze it out of the frames!
First, decap the frames and load them into the centrifuge
As you can see, in spite of all the dieting and excercise, I'm a little out of shape. Time to redouble my efforts
Then give the frames a good spin
and watch the honey flow!
So, how much honey did i get this year..
I got 12 pounds of honey in various containers, plus about 6 gallons of mead (by my estimates, about 15 pounds of honey went into it)
I'm a little worried about the mead; It's very hard to keep the honey extracting operation very sterile, but I hope the wine yeast will sort it out
What went into mead:
- Enough honey to bring original gravity to 1105
- 2 packs of Lalvin 71B yeast
- 10 grams of Fermaid-O yeast nutrient
I decided to add nothing else this time; with unfiltered honey i should have enough complexity as is
The yeast is already happily bubbling
I believe i should have the mead ready around March
Nov 11: The mead batch doesn't look too good; the smell got rather astringent, and i'm not talking about regular yeast smell
The surface looks like it's getting moldy; I will keep it in the fermenter for a few more days, but i don't think this mead can be saved
Nov 27: I have finally dumped the mead batch; it had a bit of mold growing on top, and the smell was extremely wrong - like blue cheese, but more astringent. Unfortunately, there will be no wine this year.
I discovered that acacia blooms in November/December here in northern California; on warm afternoons bees come out in droves to forage
I'm not sure what kind of acacia it is exactly - Plant.net suggests it might be Water Wattle, but with very little confidence. It looks nothing like the picture in Wikipedia, but if you google search images many look similar