Bochet Mead (burnt mead)

[Curtis2010]

...

I had a couple of thoughts:
- Many folks warned about volcanoes of honey after boiling and adding water. Why not try it the other way round? - Add the hot Honey to your water. (Chemists for obvious reasons never add water to acid they always add acid to water.)

...

The acid/base analogy works...pour hot honey into water, no problem.

Today I put about 3 gallons of water in a keg. Boiled 13.5lbs of honey and poured it in without incident. Topped up with more water.

 

[ShareBrewing]

Found this thread and couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I have 6lbs of buckwheat honey (Dutch Gold) and was baffled what to do with it.

Has anyone tried this honey for a bochet? I only found one other example on a thread but no results.

Everyone seems to give a bad rep to buckwheat, including a honey producer I talked to at a farmers market yesterday. Told him my honey had an enjoyable flavor like a mix of honey and light earthy molasses, and he looked at me like I was stupid. He couldn’t accept that buckwheat honey tasted good... yet he’s selling jars of it right in from of me lol.

My honey is a dark brown to begin with, so I have no idea how far I should push the caramelization of this honey. All I know is, this mead is gonna be black like an imperial stout.

My batch will be about 1.5 gal, aiming for a OG around 1.140. Will use some rehydrated EC-1118 champagne yeast to munch through it until they meet their alcohol tolerance. Will post pics and results along the way.

Cheers

 

[ShareBrewing]

Brew day went very well. No hiccups, truly a lot easier than I though. Not a single bit of scorch on my kettle.

Best thing I did was having all the necessary water, equipment, etc all at my finger tips when I needed it. You can’t walk away from it for a second. Helps to have your beer in reach.


Start (0 min) - it’s so dark it reflects light...
Had to add a cup of water to break up the honey

15 min

30 min

45 min

60 min

At 1 hour, turned off heat and added 1 qt of 60F water, mixed it in. Glad I added water here because I was starting to notice much more burnt scorched aromas. The water helped keep the graham cracker and marshmallow aromas developing. Staved off some of the harsher flavors, I hope.

No spots or volcanoes at all. I guess because I turned the heat off?

Turned heat back on and continued..

75 min

90 min

Threw it in an ice bath after topping it up to 2 gal. The OG was a 1.166 beast at 1.5 gal so I decided to add a bit more water, making the new OG. 1.128

A buddy came ever and said it smelled like chocolate s’mores.

Pitched 8g rehydrated EC-1118. Started to bubble about 12 hrs later.

 

[ShareBrewing]

Also, a tip for anyone concerned with the bees.

If you’re lucky enough to have changing seasons, do this in the fall or winter if you’re gonna be outside.

The bees were minimal for me but I still had a great idea to defend myself, and more importantly the honey.

I took one of those round screens with a handle that are sold to cover hot spitting pans on the stove. Had a brand new one and it fit over 80% of my open 16 gal kettle, leaving good enough room for me to stir the honey through the crescent shaped opening. Bugs would land on the screen and fly away in frustration. If they got a little aggressive, you could gently bop them away like using a tennis racket. I didn’t want to kill any bees (gotta be thankful for em), but they certainly got the point after a little bop from the screen.

Can’t say how much of a help this screen was, truly recommend trying it out if you need to brew this in the warmer months.

Also thinking about doing a s’mores version of this with graham crackers and cocoa (nibs and/or powder) to blend with those awesome marshmallow flavors. That’d be everyone’s favorite drink around the campfire!

 

[ong]

I just did a bochet last month, too. I kept the honey at a low simmer for about 4-5 hours, and it still wasn’t *black*; more of a dark chocolate. Mixed with water it’s about the hue of a brown ale, definitely not a stout. It’s been bubbling away for almost four weeks, with the 71-B yeast, and is still fairly sweet, although getting closer to where I’d like to see it (this is with 10 lbs of honey for a 3.5 gallon batch).

 

[ShareBrewing]

Your OG should’ve landed somewhere around 1.100, so how low do you think the 71-B will take it? Do you plan on backsweeting, and if so, how?

 

[ong]

Your OG should’ve landed somewhere around 1.100, so how low do you think the 71-B will take it? Do you plan on backsweeting, and if so, how?

I’ve used 71-B on fruit wines with higher gravity than that and it’s done a good job. It’s still chewing away at the mead, and it’s still pretty sweet, so I’ll just taste when it’s done and see, but typically I’ve never felt any need to backsweeten.

My biggest recommendation would be to use a bigger pot for caramelizing! Mine was only about 2.5x the height of the honey, and it was a constant battle to keep it from foaming over the edge.

 

[ShareBrewing]

Have a huge kettle for sure!

Has anyone made a bochet cyser? I think I saw an example or two in this thread but not much on results. Preparing to do a bochet-cyser this weekend using 12 lbs of honey and then cider to meet the desired volume. However only 6-7 lbs of the honey will be caramelized, with the remaining lbs being added as normal.

Apple Pie Bochet-Cyser
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/index.php?threads/Apple-Pie-Bochet-Cyser.657695/

To anyone who’s tried a bochet cyser - did you caramelize all of the honey used, or only a portion of the honey? What were your results.

 

[biochemedic]

@ShareBrewing, most varietals would get lost in the bochet process, but I think buckwheat, of any, would be potentially awesome and unique. I think a bochet cyser would be good too...never done one, only a chocolate cyser, which was indeed quite good.

Looking at your bottle of honey...Greentree or North Hills? I'm sure you can guess my LHBS, since I have location enabled on my avatar....

 

[ShareBrewing]

North Hills! Great to meet another brewer from the ‘Burgh!

PS... Our LHBS has been having a lot of Zambian wildflower honey (from Africa), and holy cow is it amazing. Only $3 more than the usual 6 lb jug. It’s so much darker, complex, and flavorful than “normal” wildflower. Even having a small hint of smoke with the citrus/earth/floral flavors.

Used 12 lbs in the bochet cyser batch yesterday and wow-za! Only half of the honey was caramelized/heated.

I implore you to check out the recipe I made for the bochet cyser. Tasted it before pitching yeast, and it was literally like biting into a well-baked caramel apple pie with notes of the crust, marshmallow topping, filling and caramel. It couldn’t have come out more perfectly. Super excited to see how this turns out in a few months.

I cooked down 3 lbs of apples (basically homemade chunky apple sauce) to add in the primary but my vol in the carboy was way too high! And the apple pie flavor was SPOT ON, so I decided to freeze the cooked apples and add to secondary.

5.5 gal batch @ 1.122 OG, w/ Lalvin 71B.

 

[ShareBrewing]

The Zambian (African) wildflower honey caramelizing

Start (no heat)

15 min

30 min

45 min

60 min - added ~1 pint fresh apple cider to hot honey, began cooking apples on the side burner. Used about 1+ qts of cider in cooking apples down.

75 min

90 min

With the 4.5 gal of cider added

 

[NZ-beekeeper]

I found a bottle from a 1 gallon batch I made over 4 years ago. Boy-o-boy is it smooth. I saw someone mentioned rum. Yes, rum-like, or like a smooth whisky without the kick (8% approx). Like a good port or so. I made a coffee flavoured one at the same time, but don't know what came of it. The fermenter I used had a new rubber stopper and the batch tasted heavily like farty eggy rubber (stressed yeast and rubber contamination) but has aged ridiculously well.

 

[Curtis2010]

I brewed a brochet almost 3 years ago and left it to age at my place in Guatemala. I had intended to return in about a year, but just finally made it back last month...it was OMG incredible! Over about 10 days we & friends consumed all but a few liters of a 5 gallon batch.

Now we are back home in Panama and Im preparing to brew a batch here and leave it to age. We usually take off sailing around Feb/March and return May/June. If I brew now, this will give me enough time to get it off to a good start and leave it to start aging while we are out sailing.

I have just over 14lbs of varietal local honey from which Ive brewed a tiny sample brochet before and it was tasty. EC-118 yeast. DAP yeast nutrient. My plan is to supplement the DAP with denatured (killed by boiling water) bread yeast (since I dont have FermK here). Ive used just denatured yeast before as a nutrient and made good mead. I will do stagged yeast nutrient additions following hightest's spread sheet calculations, but substituting the denatured yeast for FermK.

Fermentation will be done in a keg w a blow off tube. It will condition in a cool area of our house here (ambient temps are moderate here in the mountains of Chiriqui provence at 4,500'). I have a temp controlled cooler in Guatemala, but not here yet. In Guate I left it at 50F...hopefully ambient will work out OK here where its much cooler. Alternatively, I may take it up to a friend's place at 6,300' where its much cooler.

Will post pics as I move along...

 

[Miraculix]

Found this thread and couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I have 6lbs of buckwheat honey (Dutch Gold) and was baffled what to do with it.

Has anyone tried this honey for a bochet? I only found one other example on a thread but no results.

Everyone seems to give a bad rep to buckwheat, including a honey producer I talked to at a farmers market yesterday. Told him my honey had an enjoyable flavor like a mix of honey and light earthy molasses, and he looked at me like I was stupid. He couldn’t accept that buckwheat honey tasted good... yet he’s selling jars of it right in from of me lol.

View attachment 593713

My honey is a dark brown to begin with, so I have no idea how far I should push the caramelization of this honey. All I know is, this mead is gonna be black like an imperial stout.

My batch will be about 1.5 gal, aiming for a OG around 1.140. Will use some rehydrated EC-1118 champagne yeast to munch through it until they meet their alcohol tolerance. Will post pics and results along the way.

Cheers

How did it turn out?

 

[Curtis2010]

Found this thread and couldn’t get the idea out of my head. I have 6lbs of buckwheat honey (Dutch Gold) and was baffled what to do with it.

Has anyone tried this honey for a bochet? I only found one other example on a thread but no results.

Everyone seems to give a bad rep to buckwheat, including a honey producer I talked to at a farmers market yesterday. Told him my honey had an enjoyable flavor like a mix of honey and light earthy molasses, and he looked at me like I was stupid. He couldn’t accept that buckwheat honey tasted good... yet he’s selling jars of it right in from of me lol.

View attachment 593713

My honey is a dark brown to begin with, so I have no idea how far I should push the caramelization of this honey. All I know is, this mead is gonna be black like an imperial stout.

My batch will be about 1.5 gal, aiming for a OG around 1.140. Will use some rehydrated EC-1118 champagne yeast to munch through it until they meet their alcohol tolerance. Will post pics and results along the way.

Cheers

Everyone's taste preferences are different, but I agree w the honey seller. The sugars in honey are almost 100% fermentable, so what you are left with mostly is the other flavor components. I learned this the hard way when I first started brewing. I added buckwheat honey to an RIP. The resulting beer was beautiful and delicious...right up until the after taste...which reminded me of creosote (the stuff they treat rail road ties with)...it was awful. I had this otherwise beautiful RIP which was undrinkable. [emoji26]

 

[Curtis2010]

I’ve used 71-B on fruit wines with higher gravity than that and it’s done a good job. It’s still chewing away at the mead, and it’s still pretty sweet, so I’ll just taste when it’s done and see, but typically I’ve never felt any need to backsweeten.

My biggest recommendation would be to use a bigger pot for caramelizing! Mine was only about 2.5x the height of the honey, and it was a constant battle to keep it from foaming over the edge.

Yes, honey expands dramatically when heated...so use a big ass pot relative to the volume of honey...at least several times more volume than the honey.

 

[Curtis2010]

...

Now we are back home in Panama and Im preparing to brew a batch here and leave it to age. We usually take off sailing around Feb/March and return May/June. If I brew now, this will give me enough time to get it off to a good start and leave it to start aging while we are out sailing.

I have just over 14lbs of varietal local honey from which Ive brewed a tiny sample brochet before and it was tasty. EC-118 yeast. DAP yeast nutrient. My plan is to supplement the DAP with denatured (killed by boiling water) bread yeast (since I dont have FermK here). Ive used just denatured yeast before as a nutrient and made good mead. I will do stagged yeast nutrient additions following hightest's spread sheet calculations, but substituting the denatured yeast for FermK.

Fermentation will be done in a keg w a blow off tube. It will condition in a cool area of our house here (ambient temps are moderate here in the mountains of Chiriqui provence at 4,500'). I have a temp controlled cooler in Guatemala, but not here yet. In Guate I left it at 50F...hopefully ambient will work out OK here where its much cooler. Alternatively, I may take it up to a friend's place at 6,300' where its much cooler.

Will post pics as I move along...View attachment 655654View attachment 655655

...brewed this batch last night. Transfered cooked honey to keg containing 4 gallons of water...OG 1.097 (edit: corrected typo). Let cool overnight (I do this w beer too...much easier than chilling) then added DAP + yeast hulls and pitched rehydrated EC-118.

The pics show how much honey expands as it starts to boil. Pre-boil the honey covered about 1/3 of the spoon. During boil it rose to where the handle joins the spoon...about 3x expansion.

 

[Curtis2010]

...and a link to video clip of honey boiling...temp at steady boil is about 250F...so dont get this suff on you...tenaciously sticky 250F goo...not good!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wvnvsxht2hjiu6/20191207_201820.mp4?dl=0

 

[Curtis2010]

Fermentation has started! [emoji322][emoji2]

 

[Brett_Bellmore]

Do you have a vigorous fermentation? I'm making my first bochet, but it's also my first use of a brew bucket, and I'm not getting very frequent bubbles after about 5 days.

But I can't decide whether it's because caramelized honey doesn't ferment vigorously, or it's because most of the CO2 is bypassing my airlock. I kind of suspect that's what is going on.

 

[Curtis2010]

No I dont. IMHO thats good (whether beer or mead). I think overly vigorous fermentation is potentially stressful on yeast and another opportunity to create off flavors. So, I like to see ferm get off to an easy start and continue to munch away moderately until done.

Ive never had super vigorous ferm starts with meads...only with beers.

I pitched properly rehydrated EC-118 into must at 85F. It took about 14 hours to show signs of fermentation (blow off tube bubbles). Im good with that.

Temp on outter surface of keg is now 74F (not an accurate measurement of wort temp but at least in the ball park). Well within the wide range of EC-118: "This strain ferments well over a very wide temperature range, from 7° to 35°C (45° to 95°F)".

I dont think caramelization creates more complex sugars, but I dont know for sure...something to research.

 

[Shine0n]

Caramelized honey produces unfermentable sugars with complex flavors. No matter the yeast Ive used on them I've always kept residual sweetness because of that.

I just started one last week, we go by flavor profe on the boil more so than temps or time. On this one we got it to a heavily toasted marshmallow and the beginning of toffee flavors. I'm taking 6 gallons and add 10lb dried fig and 10lb dried dates for a few weeks in the secondary, after that I'll place in a used bourbon barrel for 6 months. Good lord It's going to be hard to keep me hands off it lol

Thanks for sharing your experience with us and keep us informed as things happen.

 

[Curtis2010]

Shine, thanks for the caramelization info. Ive done a little research and it seems the chemistry of caramelization has not been that well studied. Do you have any references?

Your batch sounds yummy.

One advantage of brewing in two countries is that I can leave things to age and not have access to them!

 

[Curtis2010]

Made second nutrient addition this AM and gave the yeast a good rousting. Must tastes very yummy!

 

[Curtis2010]

Do you have a vigorous fermentation? I'm making my first bochet, but it's also my first use of a brew bucket, and I'm not getting very frequent bubbles after about 5 days.

But I can't decide whether it's because caramelized honey doesn't ferment vigorously, or it's because most of the CO2 is bypassing my airlock. I kind of suspect that's what is going on.

Well...the same sorta problems can happen w kegs too! I made my second nutrient addition yesterday and it took me until late today to resolve a seal problem...went from frequent blow off tube bubbles to nada. Did I murder my yeast? [emoji33]

I reset the lid, I changed the lid oring, I changed both lid and oring...no joy. I checked the gas post...aha!...damaged oring, problem solved...nope. [emoji51] But it did make the leak around the lid loud enough for me to hear...a few more rounds of oring swapping, cleaning, and repositioning the lid and...its sealed! I now hear the happy sound of regular bubbles! [emoji2][emoji322]

Whew....

 

[Indiana Red]

Just as an update, nearly 4 years since brew day. 3G Batch Jan 2016
Fermentation went form 1.142 to 1.092 after a few weeks and stopped.
Got distracted and ignored it, sitting in my basement until a week ago. Airlock had long since dried out.
Pulled a quart of it and cut it with a half quart of RO water. Bloomed half a packet of dry champagne yeast in a cup of warmed water that I had already dissolved a big pinch of yeast nutrient in.
After 20 min or so poured that in to the 1.5qt of 1.06 "starter" I had just made.
Good activity within a day or so and I added another quart from the stuck batch and am still seeing some activity.
Ill bloom the other half packet in a similar step with more yeast nutrient and step the whole thing up once more before pitching the whole step-up project back to the original fermenter.
So far so good.

 

[Blacksmith1]

By my math 1996 was almost 24 years ago.

 

[Indiana Red]

By my math 1996 was almost 24 years ago.

...don’t know what your talking about...

 

[Shine0n]

Curtis, sorry the late response but I have no direction to point you in for caramelizing honey data. Seems alot of people have their own ways on what they think is best.

From my personal experience I'll just tell you what I do.

I use a propane burner (A GOOD ONE) and have cut off the tops of two kegs leaving the inside lip and handles.

I put all the honey in before lighting up and heat up kinda slow but not too terribly slow and when I start getting the froth on top I cut it back some. I keep stirring and monitoring until it starts to boil slightly and keep the heat to where it maintains this slow boil.

I do a color wheel on a white plate at specific time frames and taste each sample along the way.

When I get to the desired level of caramelizing I simply cut off the heat and add water to help cool.

Mine is now sitting at 1.028ish and still going, when it reaches 1.015 if still active I'm going to put it in the spare fridge and cold crash and try to drop as much solids out as possible. We did put bentonite in primary so it should drop nicely.

I'll just add the figs and dates to 6 gallons and wait a week or so for the taste I want and then cold crash again if needed and see what I get.

We're debating on filtering before adding to the barrel and most likely will do just that and I'll have faith the barrel will provide the vanilla wanted for this.

I'll post a few pics when I relocate a few to my mead files.

 

[Curtis2010]

Curtis, sorry the late response but I have no direction to point you in for caramelizing honey data. Seems alot of people have their own ways on what they think is best.

From my personal experience I'll just tell you what I do.

I use a propane burner (A GOOD ONE) and have cut off the tops of two kegs leaving the inside lip and handles.

I put all the honey in before lighting up and heat up kinda slow but not too terribly slow and when I start getting the froth on top I cut it back some. I keep stirring and monitoring until it starts to boil slightly and keep the heat to where it maintains this slow boil.

I do a color wheel on a white plate at specific time frames and taste each sample along the way.

When I get to the desired level of caramelizing I simply cut off the heat and add water to help cool.

Mine is now sitting at 1.028ish and still going, when it reaches 1.015 if still active I'm going to put it in the spare fridge and cold crash and try to drop as much solids out as possible. We did put bentonite in primary so it should drop nicely.

I'll just add the figs and dates to 6 gallons and wait a week or so for the taste I want and then cold crash again if needed and see what I get.

We're debating on filtering before adding to the barrel and most likely will do just that and I'll have faith the barrel will provide the vanilla wanted for this.

I'll post a few pics when I relocate a few to my mead files.

Thanka, but no problem with the process of caramelizing, Ive done that successfully a number of times now. What I was refering to upstream was that the chemistry of caramelization is not well studied. For example...what effect does it have on fermentability, does it create more complex sugars, etc.

Another little tip related to caramelizing: cook at night. At least here in Central America (Guatemala & Panama) Ive been swarmed by bees when I tried to caramelize in the day. Not aggressive, just feeding.