Medieval Burnt Mead!

SeamusMac · 04-03-2009, 02:58 AM

Hey guys,

During some valuable procrastination time I stumbled upon this video on youtube.

YouTube - Making a Burnt Mead recipe from 1593

I did a search for burnt mead and I didn't get any applicable results so maybe this is new to the forum! I don't plan on trying it, although I thought it might spark some discussion.

digdan · 04-03-2009, 03:51 AM

Fascinating! I used to burn malt when brewing beer to get certain flavors, but I would never had thought of burning honey. I would not have cooked it as long as the video did, but only to make a simple caramel complexity.

The mess part was funny

**summersolstice** · 04-03-2009, 11:37 AM

I can't recall exactly but didn't Charlie Papazian have an article about something similar a few months ago in Zymurgy? He was visiting in Scotland, I believe, and he tried some very old mead made with carmelized honey, and supplied a recipe in the same article. Does anyone remember that?

The Blow Leprechaun · 04-03-2009, 01:33 PM

Yeah, it's called bochet mead... I saw that video a while back, I think, and he didn't post any tasting notes, which would've been nice. Maybe he's updated?

Papazian did taste one of these in an article somewhere online... if you google for bochet mead papazian it'll probably come up.

I'd like to try one of these sometime, but I'd like to have some idea of what they'll be like first. If they taste like molasses or buckwheat, I'm not sure it's worth the honey.

digdan · 04-03-2009, 04:04 PM

Do you think scotched honey mead would have distinctive seperate taste profiles for different types of honey? Or would all scotched honey taste the same.

DShoaf · 04-03-2009, 06:25 PM

From my cooking expirience the sugars are carmalizing which should come through in the final product. I think that the flavor would be much richer and probably, depending on the level of carmalization, nutty. This is really interesting and is making its way onto my short list of things to brew. I am wondering though if you are burning the sugars then you are turning them back into their elemental properties and that means a lot more carbon and a lot less sugar. I don't know if carbon has an effect on fermentation, but a reduced amount of sugar certainly would. I wish someone had notes or a flavor profile on this so I could determine if I could get serious about it.

viking · 04-04-2009, 03:00 AM

This is on my "To Brew List", but probably won't be started until this fall (I want to take advantage of fruit this summer). As far as the burning part, well, I'm going for caramelizing, not charcoal flavoring!

DShoaf · 04-04-2009, 03:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by viking

This is on my "To Brew List", but probably won't be started until this fall (I want to take advantage of fruit this summer). As far as the burning part, well, I'm going for caramelizing, not charcoal flavoring!

AGREED!

BeerRunner · 04-04-2009, 03:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by summersolstice

I can't recall exactly but didn't Charlie Papazian have an article about something similar a few months ago in Zymurgy? He was visiting in Scotland, I believe, and he tried some very old mead made with carmelized honey, and supplied a recipe in the same article. Does anyone remember that?

I've got that article. I made a 1gallon batch after I read that. I heated up some honey until it got a bit darker. A couple of weeks later, I read the article again. There's a photo of a glass of Bochet mead. It's much darker than the batch I had going, so I made another gallon. This time I burned it, but not to the point of making "coal" like in the video. It looked like a jug of root beer. It's now a dark, but transparent, red/brown color. I'll be transferring to secondary soon.

digdan · 04-04-2009, 06:30 PM

Please let us know how it tastes