How big of a batch are you planning on making? How much honey, etc? Is nottingham a bread yeast?
The jaom recipe uses a bread yeast which would be a good first batch due to it being done pretty quickly and you not having to do anything at all to it really, just mix the ingredients, shake it up, and leave it alone for a few months.
On the other hand if you are going for a 5 or more gallon batch using a lot of honey, bread yeast will die out before it eats all the honey and leave you with an intensly sweet mead. D47 is a somewhat aggressive wine yeast. It's somewhere in the middle on the power scale from my understanding and a lot of mead makers prefer it. It flocs well and has less of a tendency to cause off flavors. There are certainly much stronger yeasts out there.
I do offer the advice of using the staggered nutrient addition technique if you make anything other than the jaom. It will reduce your fermentation time several months! This batch fermented to completion in just over a month. My last batch took over 4 months and was very sluggish along the way. Whereas this batch was vigorous and steady pretty much start to finish. If you have any questions about what I did or when I did it, just ask. Good luck on getting started! I'm sure you'll have fun with it.
