T'ej Ethiopian Honey beer

I have a recipe that is based on an Ethiopian honey wine called T'ej. It was converted into a beer/mead but it does not say the fermentation length in the recipe. I was interested to see if anyone could figure it out, im moving in 2 months and if its more then that, its going to have to wait till after.

6 gal water
3.3 pounds lme
8 pounds honey
Dry or sweet mead yeast
9.6 ounces Gesho (its used to substitute out the hops, its from ethiopia)
Starting gravity 1.080
Final gravity 1.014
ABV 9.5-10%

I bought a bottle of t'ej at Lakewood winery in the finger lakes in 2009. Forgot I had it, but found it when looking for something to take to an Ethiopian restaurant last weekend. It was friggin amazing. I make meads, but this was something different and I resolved to find a recipe. I think you could primary and bottle before you move, but it should definitely age out for a while.

Well if you want the exact recipe and steps I can send it to you. I was told by my LHBS it would take 8 months to ferment out due to the complex sugars in the 8lbs of honey (thats why im questioning if i could). It sounds amazing and gesho is hard to come by, but there is one site ive found that sells it.

8 months? I dont think i believe that. This is looks like a mead melomel/methgilin. You may want to age it at least 8 months though.

blakelyc said:

I bought a bottle of t'ej at Lakewood winery in the finger lakes in 2009. Forgot I had it, but found it when looking for something to take to an Ethiopian restaurant last weekend. It was friggin amazing. I make meads, but this was something different and I resolved to find a recipe. I think you could primary and bottle before you move, but it should definitely age out for a while.

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Oooh, I love the finger lakes and honey wine..now I'm intrigued.

Well as a mead maker on a regular basis, I can say that once the gravity hits round 1 then its drinkable, However, it may taste like ethanol. The longer you wait the better the mead tastes. After 6 months it should taste good, and after a year or longer it should taste amazing.

seen a couple of things on TV about it. One thing that you may want to look for is fresh raw honey, the stuff they showed on TV that they used, actually had a lot of bee parts and they said that was part of what gave it the unique flavor.

So a few things.

You can get Gesho powder or root at online retailers...don't use hops.

There is no way in hell this will take 8 months....He's talking about mead making which is very different. This will lag more than other beers you have brewed but it will ferment fine. Use a yeast nutrient deffinitly.

Cut the boil time shorter so that you retain more of the honey character and try and use some sort of steeping grains- maybe a # of light crystal- to get some dextrins. As for the honey, the more unrefined the better. Raw with bee parts or more likley pollen works great. Don't use clover honey if you can help it. Pretty much anything else works (not buckwheat either)...

Use an ale yeast, the mead yeast will give you a flavor which is not characteristic of the tej flavor you are looking for....

hope this helps.

Much appreciated, unfortunately i waited to long to get everything started and brewed a belgian wit instead. Once i settle down the first week of september ill be able to start it up and get the gesho root locally.

Ceetar said:

Oooh, I love the finger lakes and honey wine..now I'm intrigued.

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Definitely check out Lakewood.... they're very FingerLakesian in that they have great dry to off-dry whites, but their uber sweet stuff and all the reds pretty much suck. On trips we always hit Lakewood, Weimar, and Dr. Frank's, then whatever else we're in the mood for.

The lakewood t'ej was quite literally forgotten for years, not stored correctly and damn near abused. But on opening, it was really fantastic. Really. Remarkable even. So much so, that I was quite taken aback.

The finger lakes makes me a bit mad, to tell you the truth. They're really, really good at a small range of things, but yet they persist in doing other stuff.