A few things on Bochet. I know the new way to make mead is no heat to preserve the varietal goodness, but in this case that doesnt matter, the taste you are going of is the taste of the cooked honey. The cooking part can be done in a pressure cooker, a crock pot, a pan on the stove or even in a big kettle, the differences are how dark the honey gets burnt. The pressure cooker doest get hot enough to caramelize all the different kinds of sugars so it comes out dark mahogany, while if you cook over direct flame you can go to black. The extreme black starts when you see grey puffs of smoke rising up instead of the white steam puffs. ONce it gets started you dont have to stir it unless you used a pot that was to small and need to knock back the froth. Adding water back in the very hot molten burnt honey is dangerous, the water instantly turns to steam and the honey will jump out and get you, a better idea is to let the honey cool a little and add very hot water to it slowly. We have had no problems cleaning the burnt honey out of anything with just some hot and soap, of course if you burnt it to crisp in your pan you went a little overboard.
Additions to a Bochet to enhance its flavor have been used by a lot of people, most popular are vanilla beans, oak and even a little chocolate. The burning process seems to make some of the sugars unfermentable so many Bochets dont finish dry, I think adding some raw uncooked honey at the start of the ferment will feed the yeasts better and help reach the desired alcohol level easier. Save some of the burnt honey to backsweeten your Bochet in case it does go drier than you want, if you dont use it for your Bochet, its great on ice cream or really just by itself.
WVMJ
