In all the posts about Bochet we have read it seemed to take a long time to get the honey to burn, they always made a big deal out of the last step about adding water to it at the end and being careful you didnt splash it up and burn yourself, and if you went to far in burning it a bitter smokey taste could show up that takes a long time to age out.
Many years ago we made caramel using sweetened condensed milk put in a big pot of boiling water, you were not supposed to let the water level drop below the top of the lid or bad things would happen (I never found out what bad things as I watched it like a hawk). I got to thinking there has to be a better way. I had a pressure cooker. I dropped them into the cooker, fired it up, timed it for an hour, cooled it, the cans did not explode as some people predicted who dont know how pressure cookers work, and we made perfect caramel doing it that way.
After I read about people making Bochet I was like man I dont have a huge pot to burn it off in, I dont like to have to watch things cook for hours and then guess when they are dont, and I dont want too much smokey flavor that takes years to age out. I thought why not try to pressure cooker again. In about an hour timed when the jiggly thing starts to move on top is all it took for the mead to caramelize. The advantages are no over burning the honey, the water stays in so you dont have to add water to get the honey to flow again, the canning jars we used sealed so it would keep them sterile for as long as we needed which makes it nice to store some to use for backsweetening.
Is the flavor different from stovetop burn honey? Probably doesnt have as much toasted marshmallow flavors but certainly is full of caramel flavor. Other folks have used crock pots and we tried that to and it also works well just that our crock pot can only do a quart or 2 at a time. We also used a big 22 quart pressure canner that does 7 quarts at a time and that was very good also. I got a jet burner but no big pot, I am not sure the adventure of actually cooking it over a flame is worth getting burnt but people fry turkeys and dont all get hurt so we might have to give it a try, just wait until it gets to cold for the bees to fly out and find us!
WVMJ