Hello Bray and other mazers on this thread.
I have to first give a big 'thank you' to Bray for providing this wonderful mead recipe here and being so extraordinarily helpful to everyone. I started my brewing life with more traditional meads, but switched to cider because that fits my wife's "patience profile" a little better
. It's great to find a real mead that satisfies the same demands!
I'm currently nearing completion on my 4th batch of BOMM or BOMM-inspired mead. The first batch nearly vanished at bottling time, but I managed to save two 16-oz bottles to let them mellow. I have 2 more 1-gal near-BOMM batches (different ale yeasts because I couldn't get the 1388) stewing with some vanilla and oak, and I have a 3-gal batch of true BOMM almost done with fermentation.
I'm not a very experienced brewer, so I have some process questions I'd like to ask the community.
1) A couple of times, step-feeding has been discussed as a way to get a sweeter end product. When doing that, is the best way to calculate ABV to just sum the "delta" SG at each step, converting to ABV change as you go?
2) If step feeding until the yeast "give up" - is the yeast pretty much dead at that point? As in, it could not be re-used for another batch.
3) Regarding reusing yeast: how do you get just the top layer of sludge when you're working through a little hole several inches away from said sludge?
Next up is another batch of BOMM using a local wildflower honey (I'm just up the road from you, Bray - it's from Denison).
Thanks in advance!
--Roger