Bochet part 2......

Ok, so I had left the caramelised honey alone as I was sulphiting to make sure that I didn't screw up in any way.

Now the intention was to use some of the D21 I had for the yeast - on a completely different issue, I'd given some of the packs to another mazer from one of the forums I go to (he's local to me). He was trying to use it and it just wasn't starting to ferment, after he'd tried making a starter with it too and had no luck, I rehydrated some with some GoFerm, then topped it up with a little of the bochet must, only to find that it wasn't gonna play.....bugger!

So I just left it on the stirring plate and put a pack of 71B in to rehydrate and start doing it's thing.

By last Tuesday, it looked fine, producing some gas etc, so it went straight into the must and is fermenting fine.

I wanted it to be a stir plate batch, but the little spinner (not a proper stirrer, but one that was made for 1 gallon wine batches originally) doesn't want to keep the stir bar spinning, it just throws it off.

A little bit of experimentation with a jar of water, and it seems that I've got to raise the flask up about 1cm above the stirrer. I don't know if the issue is the strength of the magnets in the stirrer, the weight of the stir bar (it's 36mm long) or what. So I've cut little pieces of wood this morning to stand the flask on and I should be able to get the stirrer below the flask and get it spinning correctly.

It's my first go at using a stirrer etc, as I just want to try it out at this stage.

Apart from that, the ferment seems to be going great guns and is chucking out the CO2 and bubbling away just nicely.......

I'll see if I can get any pictures etc......