Medieval Burnt Mead!

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Well it's done and cooling. I let it boil a little TOO long, and it turned into a solid black mass. I added water and it softened up again. The steam also turned my hand yellow! Seriously!

orange hand.jpg
 
yeah, beautiful hands. but show us the must!!

and i feel like the darker, nastier and more burnt this thing is now, the better it will be in 20 years.
 
Must you ask for more pics? Here's more!

Brochet mead.jpg

That there is the #1 reason why you should do this outside. It's a black carbonized mess.



Mmmmm pitch black....

Brochet mead 2.jpg

I'm going to be racking this onto an apfelwein yeast cake so it should pickup with gusto. I hope.
 
I tasted a hydrometer sample of this today, and the burnt taste is very subtle and seems to work well with the honey flavors. At first I wasn't sure about this recipe, but now I have high expectations it. I think this mead is going to taste awesome when it's finished, and I don't think it will need to be aged more then an average mead.

If anyone else is tasting samples of this I would be interested to hear their thoughts on it.
 
Whoa! Just tasted mine and it's good! Aren't young meads supposed to be gross? There was still a lot of sweetness left but I expected that. I didn't pull enough to gravity test it but I'd estimate it's in the 1.020-1.030 range. I added an eight of a teaspoon of both yeast energizer and DAP to help it out. The most interesting thing though, is that it wasn't harsh at all. The caramelly flavor was pretty balanced and together with the sweetness was very pleasant without being cloying. There was no alcohol warmth whatsoever. And the biggest surprise of all, is, if you remember my recipe, the flavors the fresh sage and rosemary are giving it. It's amazing! Somehow the sage and rosemary flavors and aroma have morphed into a wintergreeny-minty flavor with a bit of resinous pine. It's very good. I was a bit worried it would taste too medicinal/culinary herby, but that's not the case at all. I'm seriously going to have to explore that herb combination in a gruit. This could seriously be the next big thing -- it's that good! I can already imagine it, sage and rosemary porter. Trust me, it's 100 times better than it sounds.
 
i just watched the video. was that a goat in the background? anyway, this is very exciting. anything that old is worth trying. i noticed that eviltoj used a stainless pot. that is why it burnt. you need thick cast iron or steel to cook that without burning it. i am going to make this in the next week. i will update.
 
Ah no, it burned because I had it over an open flame for 30 minutes, not because it's in a SS pot. Plus, this thing is called BURNT mead, it's supposed to burn! It could also be because I used a rather thin bottomed pot, rather than my nice sandwich layered bottomed pot instead.
 
Does anyone have any updates on their burnt mead? I'm really curious to know how it's coming along.

I started a one gallon batch this weekend, but because I would probably burn the house down if I cooked the honey on the stove, I threw the honey in my slow cooker.

30 hours on low, and the honey was nice and black. It only ran over the sides a little; the honey really does expand when it boils, but it was easy enough to clean up with a bit of warm water.

I added boiling water slowly to the honey after it was done cooking (I thought using water closer to the temperature of the honey would cause less of a mess), and it boiled up a lot anyways. Not sure if cooler water would have caused more or less chaos in the pot, tho.

I don't have a whole lot of fermentation activity yet; I'm going to wait another day and see how it's doing before I add more nutrients. I can't wait to taste it in a year.
 
I'll give mine a taste tonight, it really needs to be racked to secondary but I've been putting it off because I'm not sure the best way to top off. Do you top off with just boiled water or water with honey in it?
 
Forgot to update everyone. Transferred mine to secondary and instead of topping off I just hit it with some CO2. Taste was excellent. If you remember, I kind of steeped some fresh rosemary and sage for a few minutes after flameout to make my bochet a bit of a metheglin too. Amazingly, the two rather savory herbs have become quite floral and sweet in the mead. Almost minty with a fresh herbal aroma. The mead was still quite sweet from my use of an ale yeast. I think I'll pitch a packet of wine yeast to get it to dry out a little more, though it is still very good sweet. Any recommendations on a wine yeast to pitch? Color was a dark dark brown with a bit of ruby highlights, slightly hazy. The caramelized flavor came through a bit, though to be honest, I was paying much more attention to the herbal qualities in the very small sample I took (didn't want to waste much of the one-gallon batch).
 
I did my first mead as a "burnt mead" a month ago. Although, I didn't burn the honey or do the whole volume of honey, so I don't know what the heck I made.

My procedure was:
caramelizing 1 1/2 pounds of honey for about 15 minutes on low flame, then adding Water and 12 pounds of honey, cooking it for about 5 minutes on low flame with yeast nutrient, cool, pitch champagne yeast.

Not sure of the OG because, well, uh, we forgot.

I don't think it will be worth mentioning the taste results when the time comes since it's not BURNT and only a fraction of the honey was caramelized. I appreciate the video link. It's nice to see how you're "supposed" to do it.
 
KingBrianI said:
Alright, well, brewed this one up last night. Ran into a couple of problems, not the least of which was catching my stove on fire. Everything's fine though, and the fiancee didn't hit me or anything so that's good. Anyway, I made a gallon batch, and started with 4 lbs. of clover honey. Figured it didn't need to be anything special since all the aromatics would be burned off anyway. Upon heating, it almost immediately began to foam up, and didn't stop foaming up the whole time. Therefore, for the hour and a half I was cooking it on the stove, I was constantly adjusting the stove temp, stirring, and pulling it off of the eye when boilover was inevitable. After the hour and a half, the honey had turned a very dark brown, but not black, and the smell was beginning to develop a bit of "burnt", though not in a bad way. At that point I was tired of stirring and the constant attention necessary, so I figured it was dark enough. I watched the video of the guy on youtube making it, and although I thought for sure the sudden vaporization of the water when it contacted the hot sugar and the subsequent steam would throw his honey everywhere in a violent explosion, no such thing happened... for him. So armed with false confidence, I casually dumped 4 cups of water straight onto the molten sugar. And guess what. Yeah, I shot liquid magma all over the stove, the walls, the floor and not least of all, myself. Go figure, that's the kind of week I've been having. Luckily, it looked like most of the honey/water mixture stayed in the pot, so not to be dissuaded, I trudged on. My plan was to bring the mixture up to a boil, boil for 10 minutes, then take it off the heat, add the handful of sage and rosemary I picked from the yard, then let it cool overnight. I only made it 7 minutes into the boil. That's when the honey mixture that exploded and collected under the eye decided to combust. Now I had been smelling the burning honey for some time, but I was more like "hey, cool, roasted marshmallows" while I should have been like "dude, the stove smells like a marshmallow right before it becomes a fireball." So whoosh, the flames came up and danced merrily around the pot of boiling honey water. So I pulled the pot off the stove, dumped some baking soda on the flames (which worked very well actually to smother them), tossed the herbs in the pot, put the lid on, and began the arduous task of cleaning up. Luckily the fiancee was understanding and didn't injure me anymore than the napalm honey already did.

So that's the story. At one point I opened up the lid to look at the must and the herbal smell almost knocked me down. So I panicked and thought I must have added too much, so sanitized a slotted spoon and scooped them out. Luckily, this morning when everything was cool, I gave it a taste and the herbiness is just right. The sage and rosemary actually blend with the deep toffee and roasty flavors quite well. I pitched Nottingham because I had some handy. Hope that works out. Anyway I'm pretty excited about this one. Should come in somewhere between 15 and 16% ABV. I'm getting married in December so I'll plan on having a bottle then, though it will probably still taste quite young. Then again on anniversaries in years to come.
Click to expand...


Not to laugh at your misfortune, but I literally loled here at work.
 
The guy in the vid uses fire, and many have said they used their stove tops (with varying degree of success). The one pic of the propane cooker looks like quite an unholy mess. Does the propane heat the honey too quickly and/or too hot? If any of you had to do this again, would you use propane or the stove?

Thanks in advance.
 
Any more updates? I really need to know how it tastes, cause I was thinking of attempting a recipe that blends roasted chicory at flame-out.
 
Any updates here? Some great threads! This sounds like a good one to try outside (so there is no house burning) in the winter (so there are no bees) and with a partner.

Nice job everyone.
 
I gave this a whirl last night.

4lbs Organic Clover Honey
1 Packet Cotes des Blancs Yeast
1 t Fermax Nutrient

Cooked the Hnoey for a total of about an hour and 20 minutes.
Let it cool down for 15 minutes and added Spring Water very slowly.

It took a few times of just adding a quarter cup or so of water and stirring before I could add enough water at one time to totally cool things down.

Added the Honey to a 1 gallon carboy and top it off with enough spring water to come up to the bottom of the bottle neck.

Waited until the jug was no longer warm to the touch and added the Fermax, shook the jug up for a minute or two. Then added the yeast and shook again for a couple minutes.

I took a few pictures along the way...

IMG_0049.jpg


This first one is after 15 minutes of boiling.

IMG_0052.jpg


This is at the 30 minutes mark.

IMG_0057.jpg


The 45 minute mark.

IMG_0061.jpg


One hour.

IMG_0064.jpg


About 1 hour and 20 minutes.

IMG_0065.jpg


Cooling down in the carboy.

IMG_0055.jpg


My Partner in crime and helper extraordinaire.....Piglet.


It's blurping the airlock about once every 10 seconds or so this morning so I guess I'm on my way.

This is only the second Mead I've ever tried in my very brief Home Brewing experience. I did not take any kind of readings with my Hydrometer. I'm not really clear on how to use the thing yet.

I'm wondering how long I should let it go and when and if I should rack it to another carboy?

If I do rack it to another carboy should I then let it just sit for the rest of the process or should I be looking 6 months down the road and then move it into another jug for the long haul?
 
Piglet looks like a cool brewing buddy to have around.

Did you wait till black bubbles where bursting black smoke? (translated to what we now call English).
I'm thinking maybe adding a little acid be it DAP or lemon juice would help with the inverting and carmalizing. I just think I would have to cover my entire stove and counter top with tin foil before I tried this indoors.
 
I didn't take it quite that far, I did wait until there was the slightest change in the color of the smoke coming frome the bubbles. The smell had changed at that point also, I never noticed the toasted marshmellow smell, mine seemed to begin to smell a bit cinged. Didn't taste that way at all, it tasted like a very deep carmel.

It also never really stopped rising up in the pot either. My pot had a two gallon capacity, and it came close to over flowing once or twice. I tried to keep the heat right in the medium range on my stove, and that seemed to work well.

The pot cleaned up easily I let it soak overnight, I only had one mishap regarding the stove top. Like I siad it came close to going over once or twice one of the times I started stirring it very vigorously and I flipped a globe onto the stove. Other than that things went very well consider I had four pounds of molten honey to deal with.
 
I tried mine a few days ago. Burned it to motor oil color. Champagne yeast. At 8 months, it tastes a lot like a Port wine. I like it. I'm definitely going to scale up the recipe.
 
I tried a 1-gallon test, didn't fully burn the honey, and used an amount of raw honey too, along with some raisins. It's in secondary now. It has a nice toffee/honey smell to it and a beautiful orange-amber colour.

I am going to experiment with different levels of caramelization when I can afford more honey. I like the idea of using caramelized honey in mead in a way similar to using roasted malts in beer.
 
Kauai_Kahuna said:
Did you wait till black bubbles where bursting black smoke? (translated to what we now call English).
Click to expand...

This is the translation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEVERAGES FOR INVALIDS- :p
BOUCHET. To make six sixths of bouchet, take six pints of fine sweet honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir continually until it starts to grow, and you see that it is producing bubbles like small globules which burst, and as they burst emit a little smoke which is sort of dark: and then stir, and then add seven sixths of water and boil until it reduces to six sixths again, and keep stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it is just warm; and then strain it through a cloth bag, and then put it in a cask and add one chopine (half-litre) of beer-yeast, for it is this which makes it the most piquant, (and if you use bread yeast, however much you like the taste, the colour will be insipid), and cover it well and warmly to work. And if you want to make it very good, add an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of Paradise and cloves in equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be less, and put them in a cloth bag and throw in. And after two or three days, if the bouchet smells spicy enough and is strong enough, take out the spice-bag and squeeze it and put it in the next barrel you make. And thus you will be able to use these same spices three or four times.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have also seen this line, "which is sort of dark", translated as "blackish"
 
I've been meaning to make one of these since the zymurgy article. I needed to borrow some courage from others, though, so thanks for that. I finally made a 3 gallon batch today.

I don't know what mileage others are getting boiling the honey on an outdoor burner, but there's no way I would've let this go even an hour. I had it on my old turkey fryer burner for 45 minutes and it looked like coal tar and was giving off an eye-stinging white smoke. The smell at this point was like a glorious meadow of wildflowers aflame in napalm. You know that scene in The Wizard of Oz where they're running through the poppies, and fall asleep, and the good witch waves a wand, makes it snow, the poppies die, and the heroes wake up and dash off? Yeah, well, imagine their benefactor had not been Glenda the Good Witch of the North but Sgt. Slaughter who showed up with a flame thrower. That's what it smelled like. Exactly.

I used 9# generic honey and boiled in a 7 gallon kettle. It foamed up to half-way and splattered a few drops onto the garage floor, but otherwise no drama. I let it cool a bit, threw in a few drops of water to see how explosive it would be, then dumped in ~2 gallons. After it cooled further, I took a gravity reading, and topped up with more water to 3 gallons. The OG is 1.100.

Here's a pic from the first hydro sample...

Bochet_Hydro.JPG


Happy brewing, y'all,
 
PS, SWMBO would be happy to drink the must as is. To me, it tastes like a shot of espresso with maybe two tablespoons of sugar, to her it tastes like delicious burned marshmallows.
 
Thinking of brewing this up this week, I have enough honey for 5 gallon batch (15 lbs). Thinking about getting the spices described in the above translation. Any ideas on grains of paradise locally? Also "long pepper"?

Yeast, Thinking S-05 (to stick with "beer yeast"), I do like sweeter wines so I'd probably like a sweeter mead. I also have Nottingham, Wyeast 3068 (weizen yeast), and Montrachet. I have yeast nutrient as well.
 
Grains of Paradise come from West Africa. The name comes from Medieval spice traders looking for a way to inflate the price - it was claimed that the peppery seeds grew only in Eden, and had to be collected as they floated down the rivers out of paradise. They are sharp tasting, like black pepper, and in the Middle Ages were used as a cheaper substitute for black peppercorns.
 
long pepper comes from the plant piper longum. It's a lot like black pepper, only a little spicier on average, and the dried flower cones are used instead of the fruits. Black pepper would be a fine substitute.
 
Cool, I'll try to get some grains of paradise from whole foods, and sub black pepper for long pepper. I don't know about the amounts though.

Any thoughts on yeast? Also should I do 3 lb per gallon or 4?
 
Damn! that's a brilliant thread!

The "suck it and see" approach is pretty much how I make all my meads. I just can't be bothered to get anal about it (though maybe some of them would turn out better if I did.....)

It'll definitely be one to think about!
 

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