Day before 5 gallons of Mead

It is the day before 5 gallons of mead. Kevin will be coming over tomorrow night. I am trying to get the starter ready. I found a mead OG calculator and determined that we will likely start with an OG at around 1.1. I look at Jamil's website and he says I will need a 1 liter starter with 2 vials. I have two vials. I need to make a starter.

Having referenced the same mead OG calculator it tells me that for 1L of water, 6oz of honey will give an OG of 1.045. I measured out 6oz the best I found and with my new badass refractometer I found the starter gravity to be 1.050. This is not tragic. The internets say we will need a OG around 1.050 for a mead starter. So we win.

I will warm up the solution, which is now a "must", to 160ish and hold it there for 15mins to kill germs. Then cool it to 70F. Then we get to the issue of nutrients.

Last time I added some Go-Ferm. I guess this is just for dry yeast so this go around I wont bother. The internet also claims I will need Fermaid-K which I have. But I also need DAP. Now this is conflicting because the Fermaid-K says it already has DAP in it and any more is not needed. Who to believe. Well I haven't got DAP so I guess it doesn't really matter. We'll add the Fermaid-K. I think here's what I will do. Kevin and I will add 5 grams on brew day. Then Kevin will add O2 for a couple of days. On the third day he will add 5 more grams.

The yeast I am using is White Labs Sweet Mead Wine Yeast. They've been in the fridge awhile at MoreBeer since one of them has a best before date of 1-14-12 and the other 2-12-12. So, one of them shouldn't be used. Oh well. The lot numbers are: 1720TCL7247351 and 1720TLP3416061.

Kevin bought the honey from Bennett's Honey Farm in Fillmore, CA. He bought two buckets which is way more that we need. That comes to 24lbs. I think we will use about 15 lbs of it. That leaves a bit left for experimentation.