Just tried a weird version of Dogfishead’s T’ej Ale. Made a starter 24hrs. before brewday with 3/4 cup light DME, 650ml water to boil, cool to 80ish and pitch Wyeast 4632 Dry Mead. Brewday: In a seperate pot, boil 8oz. gesho (an African tree root) with 1lb. Light DME for 20min. and set aside. In main brewpot, boil 3.3lbs light LME and 12lbs.(!) light amber honey (from Northern Brewer catalog). Add 2oz cascade hops.(60min.starts now). @30min. 2oz. cascade hops. 10 min. remaining, add yeast nutrient and the gesho boil mix. Cool down to 80ish and pitch yeast. Secondary 2 weeks later. Bottled 3 weeks after that. I tasted this a month later, highly carbonated, still a little hot (ABV 10%). Maybe great in a few more months. Any thoughts?
I don’t know anything about mead yeast or fermentation, but in a beer that big a 650 mL starter would be underpitching substantially. Between that and the very high fermentation temperature I’m not surprised you have some hot or solventy alcohol character. It may fade over time, but ideally you want to do that while still in contact with the yeast, so you may have bottled too early. All you can do now is wait and see.
Just had some of this (it is a bastardised version of T’ej Ale from Sam C’s book Extreme Brewing) Pretty darn good. The alcohol burn has waned a bit (have access to an NIR machine was 9.8%). Next time probably forgoe the second hop addition. Wondering if anyone else has tried any of the recipes in Sam’s book?