Clovingly Sweet

By Kazetani, November 2, 2015

Who says you have to use cloves sparingly.  New year, new mead, and Tarou and I decided to do separate batches.  For Tarou’s new mead of the new year, he decided to go with Desert Honey and cloves, with the ratios based on his previous Sweet Mead.

• 17 gm bottle of Whole Cloves
• 4.5 lbs Local Desert Honey (Green Label @ Whole Foods)
• 12 cups hot water
• 1/2 tsp Red Star dry yeast

Honey and water were simmered for 15 minutes, then foam skimmed off the top.  After mix was cooled to 85 degrees-ish, a small amount was used to pitch the yeast and the rest added to the brew bucket.  Yeast and the whole bottle of cloves went into the honey and water, and all was mixed well. Mead was fermented for a month, then racked off the bed and Sparkaloid added to clarify.  A week later, it was bottled.  Final count, 3 blue bottles, 2 oil bottles.