Advice / Discussion on using mugicha in a Bochet

[Krawu]

So I really like Mugicha, which is water in which roasted, unhulled barley has been steeped or boiled.
Since I tend to drink it basically instead of water during the summer and it's weighed against gold in import stores I usually bum a large bucket of unmalted barley from a local grain silo after harvest and roast it myself as needed.

Last time I did so, the idea came to me that I could use this in a Bochet.
Does anyone have experience with that kind of thing? Do I need to be worried about spoilage before the fermentation can take hold, or is there anything else that I should pay attention to?

 

[bernardsmith]

Not familiar with Mugicha but it sounds a little like Rejuvelac which was a drink popular (by some accounts) in the 60's and made from wheat berries soaked in water for about three days. The lactic bacteria in the wheat multiply and the water becomes flavored with lactic acid. I've used the water from the wheat berries to make a mead and it can be quite delightful. It's the same kind of sour as you might find in a sour beer. That said, I doubt that your barley will ferment. You are not malting it , nor are you adding any enzymes to catalyze the complex sugars and break them down into sugars indigenous yeast might be able to ferment. The bacteria on the barley are not turning the barley into alcohol as much as transforming some of the sugars into lactic acid.

 

[Krawu]

Not familiar with Mugicha but it sounds a little like Rejuvelac which was a drink popular (by some accounts) in the 60's and made from wheat berries soaked in water for about three days. The lactic bacteria in the wheat multiply and the water becomes flavored with lactic acid. I've used the water from the wheat berries to make a mead and it can be quite delightful. It's the same kind of sour as you might find in a sour beer. That said, I doubt that your barley will ferment. You are not malting it , nor are you adding any enzymes to catalyze the complex sugars and break them down into sugars indigenous yeast might be able to ferment. The bacteria on the barley are not turning the barley into alcohol as much as transforming some of the sugars into lactic acid.

Thanks for replying.
I'm just looking to use the Mugicha for flavor, the fermentable sugars would of course come from the honey.
The Mugicha itself is pretty much sterile after brewing since I usually simmer the roasted barley in water for 20-30 minutes to make it.

My main concern would be that something will get at the must before the yeast can build a colony since I have no experience with that kind of thing.
I know some people have used tea instead of water in their mead so I'm hoping to draw on that kind of experience for some tips and pointers.

 

[bernardsmith]

But why not simply add K-meta 24 hours before you pitch the yeast? The SO2 will kill any bacteria and yeasts in the solution and so you give your choice of yeast free hand. What you might also do, if you are concerned, is pitch a very active yeast starter rather than sprinkle the yeast on the surface. In other words, grow the yeast culture on a low concentration of honey and nutrient (or even malted barley) at a gravity of about 1.040 or less for 24 hours and pitch that starter the number of viable and active yeast cells will swamp any competing yeast or bacterium.

 

[Krawu]

But why not simply add K-meta 24 hours before you pitch the yeast? The SO2 will kill any bacteria and yeasts in the solution and so you give your choice of yeast free hand. What you might also do, if you are concerned, is pitch a very active yeast starter rather than sprinkle the yeast on the surface. In other words, grow the yeast culture on a low concentration of honey and nutrient (or even malted barley) at a gravity of about 1.040 or less for 24 hours and pitch that starter the number of viable and active yeast cells will swamp any competing yeast or bacterium.

Thanks again. Unfortunately I had no sulfite tablets or powder on hand (they seem to be kind of rare in Germany anyways there's a total of 3 on Amazon)) so I'll have to rely on my yeast outcompeting anything else that may be in there.

What I did was to follow your advice to make a starter to give the little buggers the numeric advantage. I killed some bread yeast in boiling water, dissolved honey, let it cool and let the yeast do its' thing for 12 hours. It went super active within hours after pitching despite the hefty difference in SpGr. Added just a bit of diammonium phosphate to make the yeast go brrr
I'll open the barrel to let in O2 and shake it up in 24 hrs and then just forget about it for a month or so, hopefully to find the first mugicha Bochet I know of.

 

[bernardsmith]

Curious to know how this turns out. Will you keep us informed one way or another. Love to know how this tastes.

 

[Krawu]

Curious to know how this turns out. Will you keep us informed one way or another. Love to know how this tastes.

I added a reminder to update the thread to the SpGr note on the barrel
Given that it's quite the toasty Bochet it may take some time to age to a drinkable state though.

What I'm hoping for is that the mugicha will add a more grainy, nutty, dry toastyness the toffee-like toastyness of the Bochet, basically resulting in a caramel and malt kind of cereal flavor that is nice and complex but doesn't overwhelm.
If I'm unlucky the yeast or the aging will weaken the Mugicha taste but I toasted it a bit lighter and brewed it stronger than usual to account for that. Between the caramellized honey and mugicha I can't see even an inch into the mash. Maybe I'll snap a pic when I open it up.

 

[bernardsmith]

Toasty bochet... or burnt honey bochet? The temperature at which honey caramelizes is much lower than many mead makers appear to imagine. Those Youtube videos that talk about looking for black smoke swirling from the cooking honey might as well be toasting bread inside a furnace designed to keep a NYC high rise warm. Fructose - 40% of honey caramelizes at 230 F (110C) and glucose (30%) caramelizes at 320F (160C) as does the sucrose and the galactose. Much above 320 F and you have a burnt offering and not bochet.

 

[Krawu]

Toasty bochet... or burnt honey bochet? The temperature at which honey caramelizes is much lower than many mead makers appear to imagine. Those Youtube videos that talk about looking for black smoke swirling from the cooking honey might as well be toasting bread inside a furnace designed to keep a NYC high rise warm. Fructose - 40% of honey caramelizes at 230 F (110C) and glucose (30%) caramelizes at 320F (160C) as does the sucrose and the galactose. Much above 320 F and you have a burnt offering and not bochet.

Haha, no worries. I used a slow cooker set to high to caramellize it, but left it in there for a loooong time. That way a good portion of the honey can caramellize but it's basically impossible to burn. It was a very dark brown in the end but not burnt and the taste extremely dark, earthy, and malty.
The finished must also contains about 1/3 normal honey to make sure there'd be plenty of fermentable sugars.

Though I'm guessing Bochets were invented because someone actually burned their honey (early recipes all involve boiling the must, so someone probably let it sit on the fire for way too long) and then used it anyways.

 

[bernardsmith]

I wonder if you are on to something. I bet some apprentice mead maker way back in history allowed the honey and must to boil until all the water had evaporated and discovered that the cooked honey could still be used to make a mead that tasted every bit as good as the usual meads made ... and perhaps even a little better (although most meads made in history were for medicinal purposes and the taste may not have been the foremost thing on anyone's mind (metheglin and medicine have the same root). .

 

[Krawu]

I wonder if you are on to something. I bet some apprentice mead maker way back in history allowed the honey and must to boil until all the water had evaporated and discovered that the cooked honey could still be used to make a mead that tasted every bit as good as the usual meads made ... and perhaps even a little better (although most meads made in history were for medicinal purposes and the taste may not have been the foremost thing on anyone's mind (metheglin and medicine have the same root). .

I like to think that the origins of many foods and drinks are just fortunate mistakes.
Ale was probably invented when someone let the porridge made from low quality barley that had already started sprouting sit for a few days too long. Blue cheese is literally mouldy cheese. We have a signature sweet breadroll in my city that was probably invented when some baker failed at making a proper croissant.
Most people know the story how potato chips were invented by a fed-up cook when a some picky customer at a restaurant kept sending back his pan fried potatoes because when were "cut too thickly".

 

[Krawu]

Update time:

I racked it to secondary at the 1 month point exactly, on April 15th.
Activity had stopped about 10 days before that - this stuff absolutely blazed through primary, probably because the Mugicha served as yeast nutrients.

One month later it's clear enough that you can read through it. I used no fining agents at all.

It ended up at around 1.044 Spgr but I'd only call it medium sweet. Probably because of caramellized sugars in there. ABV should sit at around 13-14%.

Taste-wise it's only partially what I envisioned, damn good regardless.
Upfront you get hit with sweet malty notes. The sweetness lingers while the maltyness slowly gives way to a nutty, grainy quality that sticks around for minutes on end with a pleasant oilyness. The last part is typical for mugicha but fermentation somehow didn't diminish it but turned it up to 11, in a good way.

I'm super stoked to see what an extra year or two of aging will do for it.

Also, that color is absolutely insane:

 

[Dan O]

Wow!! Love that color