Medieval Burnt Mead!

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Brewing it up right now! I'm using 17 lb of honey for a 5 gallon batch. I'll use half an ounce of each of the spices (quarter ounce of cloves). I'll do that in secondary. I found another translation below, looks like I'm using more honey than the traditional recipe, but I want something that will age well.

From what I surmize from the website, the below recipe is for 48 pints (6 gallons) and uses 6 pints of honey (9 lbs.)


Perhaps this recipe from Le Menagier de Paris, c. 1393, (Power's translation, 1928, pp. 293-4) will be of some use to you.

"BEVERAGES FOR THE SICK - BOCHET
To make six sesters of bochet take six pints of very soft honey and set it in a cauldron on the fire, and boil it and stir it for as long as it goes on rising and as long as you see it throwing up liquid in little bubbles which burst and in bursting give off a little blackish steam; and then move it, and put in seven sesters of water and boil them until it is reduced to six sesters, always stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it be just warm, and then run it through a sieve, and afterwards put it in a cask and add half a pint of leaven of beer, for it is this which makes it piquant (and if you put in leaven of bread, it is as good for the taste, but the colour will be duller), and cover it warmly and well when you prepare it. And if you would make it very good, add thereto an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grain of Paradise and cloves, as much of the one as of the other, save that there shall be less of the cloves, and put them in a linen bag and cast it therein. And when it hath been therein for two or three days, and the brochet tastes enough of the spices and is sufficiently piquant, take out the bag and squeeze it and put it in the other barrel that you are making. And thus this powder will serve you well two or three times over."
 
I love reading that old recipe....I'm going to do a 5 gallon batch with 12lbs of honey.

I'm going to have to cook the honey in 3 batches, 4lbs each batch. I have a couple 6g packs of Munton's Ale yeast will most likely use one of them for this 5 gallon batch, along with some nutrients.

Planning on bottling letting it go until I'm 65...
 
That is the other one I found. Note that is says blackish. If you watch the first video you see the smoke get dark colored, but the guy keeps pushing for "black" smoke. I would end my boil at that point. Thanks for posting the other translation.

Now to obtain a large enough kettel for a 5-6 gallon batch....:tank:
 
I boiled for 6.5 hours (very low heat to prevent boilover). ~1.5 gallons of honey in a 7 gallon pot, still wanted to climb out and all over the stove.

After the boil I added in about a gallon of water, got it back to boiling, then added 3 gallons of fridge temp water to cool it down, used an auto-siphon to put it in the 6 gallon carboy. I haven't taken a gravity reading yet (I did pull a sample mid siphon.)

OG looks like 1.132
 
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.

Hey EvilTOJ: How big was your SS pot? I'm thinking about doing this with my cheapo 3.5 gallon (very thin) SS pot over an open fire. Is this a bad idea? I figure if I stir like crazy I can prevent it from charring to the bottom of the pot, but maybe this is wishful thinking on my part.


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.

This sounds amazing. I think I'm going to do exactly this for my first attempt. Do you happen to remember how long you had your herbs in there before you pulled them out? I'm going to try a "handful" of each myself. :)
 
My SS pot was 5 gallons and thin and cheap as can be. I only used my thinner pot because I didn't want burnination on my 'good' 5 gallon SS pot. As long as you stir it and don't let the leavings cool in the pot I think you'll be alright.
 
I just did a 5 gallon batch of this using 12 lbs of Suebee amber honey in my 7.5 gallon aluminium pot on medium heat. It took just over 3 and a half hours to get down to the described levels, and it had foamed up to the 5 gallon level on my pot. So roughly 1 gallon foamed up to 5 gallons.

I checked the temperature at this "burnt" level and it was 297F, just around 5 degrees short of the "hard crack" level of 302F. I realize now how important it is to get some water in there slowly, but if you let it get hard your in trouble.

One other very important note, I live on the 9th floor and I had a screen door closed going to the balcony, around an hour into the boil I noticed around 10 bee's trying to fly in. Checked the front of the unit and there were a number of bee's trying to fly in there also.
 
Not to get off topic, but has anybody sampled a finished, aged product of this burnt mead yet? I am intrigued, but want to read a couple reviews of the finished product before embarking on the journey.
 
Is anyone concerned that the 1118 might take it too dry and the burnt flavor will dominate without enough sweetness to back it up? What other yeasts are you guys using? Notty was mentioned... I've never made a mead and I plan to start with this one.
 
Is anyone concerned that the 1118 might take it too dry and the burnt flavor will dominate without enough sweetness to back it up? What other yeasts are you guys using? Notty was mentioned... I've never made a mead and I plan to start with this one.

Using S-05 and Nottingham on mine (recipe called for "beer yeast") I only had one package of each so I pitched them both. It lagged for a couple days so I made a starter last night of wyeast 1028 (London Ale). Not sure if I'll pitch that now since fermentation has really pickedup. I figure if the recipe called for beer yeast... it may well have been a mixture of different strains anyway.

After fermentation is done I'll put in the Grains of paradise, Long pepper, ginger and clove for a few days.
 
Well, I was not paying attention when I pitched my yeast and threw in some washed WLP300, I wanted US-05 so I pitched that also after realizing my mistake.
The fermentation also lagged for around 2 days, then picked up. In the last 20 hours the SG has dropped 0.010.
I'm also cheating and adding the spices after primary fermentation has slowed down. I don't want them to be under or over in taste.
 
Not to get off topic, but has anybody sampled a finished, aged product of this burnt mead yet? I am intrigued, but want to read a couple reviews of the finished product before embarking on the journey.

Mine is going on 7 months old now. Its very clean and mellow. Higher alcohol is up there but its falling off. Alot of dried fruit and caramel/toffee notes in the nose.

The honey is coming through now. The first whiff reminds me of toasted marshmallows.

It is very pleasant. It has gotten a lot of positive feedback from my brew club members.
 
Mine is going on 7 months old now. Its very clean and mellow. Higher alcohol is up there but its falling off. Alot of dried fruit and caramel/toffee notes in the nose.

The honey is coming through now. The first whiff reminds me of toasted marshmallows.

It is very pleasant. It has gotten a lot of positive feedback from my brew club members.

BF, What was your FG? What yeast did you use?
 
Recipe is here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/bochet-mead-burnt-mead-148209/index2.html#post1695807

I used Montrachet and EC 1118 combined because I didn't have enough of either by themselves.
Nov0909.jpg
 
Did the Ec118 take it too dry? I appreciate your help, I have a 1 gal. batch going that is motor oil black .... I'm curious how that will compare to just carmelized? Do I need to start over?
 
Recipe is here:

REALLY NICE montage, I would say you stopped at the hard ball, or like 275F+ temp. I wish I took pictures, but then again in a system rebuild I lost all my brewing notes. The back of my head is still bright red from slapping myself.

Mine was very black, and taking the temp cost me a few burns. Mine will be aged for at least a year before I start busting it out. Please let us know when yours is hitting the fantastic or best it's getting zone.
 
Has anyone else bottled and/or open a bottle that has been sitting for a while. How does it taste? smell?
Need to know more....
 
I opened a bottle last night...

Caramel.JPG


It needs to age a bit longer. With that said, it has a slight cola taste to it. There are a few things that I will do differently with my next batch.

1. I will caramelize the honey longer.
2. I will back-sweeten it more. (It is too dry for me. It fermented to .998, then I back-sweetened to 1.007)
3. I will back-sweeten with honey, not dextrose. (I didn't want raw honey to interfere with the caramelized honey flavor)

I'll let you all know if it gets better with time.
 
So I transferred to secondary the other day, I have just about 4.75 gallons in a 5.5 gallon carboy (True measurement on my "5" gallon carboys) Should I top up with water, honey-water, burnt-honey water or do I need to re ferment a 1 gallon batch and use that?
 
A thought for back-sweetening ... maybe when doing the inital caramelization of the honey, caramelize more than you need and save off the extra for back-sweetening in order to add back more caramel notes?
 
This technique definitely sounds like it would produce some very tasty results. Just curious, but was I the only one who immediately thought of adapting this to make a candy-apple cyser?
 
Well, I burnt mine on 20091214, used WLP300 and S-05, and it fermented down to a SG of 1.020, racked to secondary on 20091228.
It still looked like black tar and I let it settle out until 20100112 when I racked it to a keg to bulk age. SG still 1.020.
My notes -
20100112 Racked to keg, SG 1.020, Heavy, kind of nutty, caramel flavour. It still looks like a black hole, black as the night.
I think I need to bulk age this for at least a couple more months, I'm hoping some of the taste will come out a bit more.
 
Hey guys, so SWMBO and I are boiling honey as I type. Smells great. My question is--have any of you used the plastic spoons you stir wort with? We thought the higher temps of the honey might be a problem, so we're using a shorter metal spoon, but I thought I ask to see if it had been done.

The spoon I have looks like this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/winemaking/24-plastic-spoon.html

The site says nothing about actual temps, but boiling honey gets much higher than water...

Thanks! I'll post pics and details later...

EDIT: Here's the thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/stark-raven-mead-burnt-honey-mead-attempt-163268/#post1885693
 
Going to be burning up a small experimental batch of this very soon (quite possibly this weekend), and was giving thought to the yeast involved. I've seen a number of folks use various ale yeasts which will leave the mead very sweet, and I've seen some use champagne (or similar) yeast which would leave it very dry.

I'm looking to strike a balance somewhere in there. I was contemplating using White Labs Sweet Mead Yeast WLP720, which I believe should leave some residual sweetness without being cloying. It'll tolerate up to 15%, so shouldn't poop out as soon as most ale yeasts, right?

Any thoughts? Suggestions? Reviews of previous batches to suggest a yeast used that didn't leave it overly sweet?
 
I used EC-1118 in my bochet, and I feel it's too sweet. That yeast should be good to 18%. I think cooking the sugars this much makes them less fermentable, but I'm just guessing (or making excuses, I don't know).

By the way, I used the White Labs Sweet Mead yeast a couple of years ago, and it left the mead cloying. Since it was my first mead, I might not have used the best nutrient schedule in that batch, but it was very, very sweet at the end.
 
I'm really starting to think people are taking the "burnt" part too literal. Maybe its a personal preference but I stopped it short of actually burning the sugar. I caramelized the honey until it was a very very dark color but it did not have any burnt flavors.

My batch is a mix of two champagne yeasts and finished sweet but not so cloying you can't drink it. I have had a couple people not like it due to the residual sweetness but that is out of the many others who found it to be very pleasant. I suggest a very healthy yeast pitch with some nutrient and oxygenation in the first couple days to get it to fully attenuate.
 
My batch is a mix of two champagne yeasts and finished sweet but not so cloying you can't drink it. I have had a couple people not like it due to the residual sweetness but that is out of the many others who found it to be very pleasant. I suggest a very healthy yeast pitch with some nutrient and oxygenation in the first couple days to get it to fully attenuate.

Well, I'll give the EC-1118 a go then, with adequate nutrients and oxygen. It seems to have the greatest potential, and if it overshoots into the dry range I can always backsweeten to my tastes... although I'd rather hit the mark along the way.

Not taking the "burnt" too much to heart, but I like the final color that machinelf achieved in THIS post, colors shown below:

DSCN9953copy.jpg
 
I'm starting a batch of this as we speak. I'm starting out with 6 lbs of cheap CHEAP walmart honey. Although I've noticed something that wasn't mentioned in any instructions. You know what happens when you make a brochet mead outside? You get a ****ton of bees, that's what! It was not even boiling 5 minutes before a bee landed in it. mmmmm bee parts.....

Yes... this happens every time I brew mead outside...
 
New to the forum and have a question about burnt mead. Does Champagne yeast produce more or less alcohol then using ale or wine yeast? Plus loving what I am seeing in this thread.
 
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