The "Heather Honey" batch!

The heather honey batch as it looks today!
Well, I don't remember whether I mentioned how I got round the problem of the surprisingly high pH reading I was getting from the batch so I tell it (again?) here.

I'd got it mixed up with all the ingredients, including the 1 teaspoon of citric acid, but the pH was still high, so out of confusion/desperation/lack of knowledge etc, I just put a further 2 teaspoons of tartaric acid in it and then matched it with a further 1 teaspoon of citric - totalling 4 teaspoons of acid.

Now I thought that was way too much, but after getting some advice, it still seemed like a lot, but probably not excessively so.

The following day the pH was down to 4.3, which I was much happier with (and it was inside my "comfort zone").

So I pitched the yeast (Lalvin K1V-1116) during the mid morning and I'll be damned if it was happily bubbling away by the evening.

Yesterday afternoon I was doing some checks on my current ferments, and the heather honey was giving me a gravity reading of 1045 (down from 1140 the previous week) and a pH reading of 3.95 (down from the 4.30 of the previous week).

As for the taste ? Wow!, if I could have, I'd have drunk the lot there and then. Apart from the obviously present "yeastiness", it had a nice, strong honey flavour - though I suppose that's to be expected with heather honey, with a good sweetness - again, not surprising given that it was at a S.G. of 1045

The honey is a little curious, because I couldn't find out whether the heather base for the bee's, was bell or ling heather. Also, it was very, very viscous - I'm guessing somewhere in the region of twice as "thick" as normal processed wild flower honey. It also looked a little granular, though why that might be, I don't know.

TTFN