La Bella Luna Mead

I expanded my brewing horizons this past week with a crash course in making mead. This project had two goals; 1) get back to basics and the beginning, and 2) brew up something meaningful for my wedding. 
Ask a beer enthusiast what the first man-made alcohol was, and they will surely answer beer. Ask a mead enthusiast what the first alcohol consumed was, and the answer will be fermented honey. Currently, the archaeological evidence points to beer being older; however, it is widely accepted that consuming mead predated soil cultivation (a necessary evil for extensive beer brewing). Either way, mead is clearly an ancient beverage with histories throughout Africa, Europe, and Asia.
With mead's age, comes tradition. Probably the most cited tradition is giving mead to a newly wed couple. Throughout Europe, the term honeymoon derives from the practice of providing newly weds with enough honey wine to drink a cup daily for a month. Could this nectar of the gods be a more appropriate wedding libation? 
Even if we throw every other tradition out the window, I know that we have to have a mead toast at the wedding, and plenty to drink afterwards ;) So, I met up with a friend who brews traditional mead competitively, she gave me some pointers, and I was on my way.

Batch size: ~13 gal
30lbs Honey (from local apiary)*
10gal Spring Water
2 5oz packets Pasteur Champagne yeast (Red Star) 
        
Making mead is deceptively easy; all you need is honey, water, and yeast, but forget to sanitize one thing and you have 13 gallons of blegh. So, after extensive cleaning and sanitizing, I got to brewing. My 10gal brewpot could not handle this much fluid, so, I split it up into two batches; luckily mead is less time consuming than beer. For the first batch, I boiled 6gal of water, stirred in 18lbs honey, brought the whole thing back to a boil and boiled for about 15min. Then I chilled the must, split it evenly between my two primary fermenters and started on the next batch. There is a lot of debate as to whether or not you should boil the honey, so to account for this, on the next batch, I boiled 4gal water, turned off the burner, and stirred in 12lbs honey and did not boil it. This mixture was still pretty hot, so, I chilled it to about 80F and split it between the two fermenters. I pitched the rehydrated yeast and measured the SG (1.100). Less than 24 hrs later, both buckets are bubbling away, and things still smell delightful!
*A word to the wise- If you can, buy this much honey in bulk, it is significantly cheaper than buying 6 5lbs containers of honey.