Bochet Mead (burnt mead)

[Emerald]

A word about cost between Sam's club and Gorden food service- I go to both stores quite often(the fact that they are across the street from one another helps lol) and the Sam's club honey was $12 for 5 lbs and the Gorden Foods was $12 for 6 lbs so if you are in a big town and gonna check out Sam's and there is a GFS nearby, give them a peek-- you don't even have to have a membership to go there. it is just clover honey, but for brochet it would be fine.
When ya gotta brew, saving a few bucks here and there never hurts!

 

[BargainFittings]

Another update. The bochet mead did well at the Celtic Brew-off and got me first place and a Best of Show in meads.

Its a nice drink and is doing well in the circuit.

 

[machinelf]

Congrats!

Another update. The bochet mead did well at the Celtic Brew-off and got me first place and a Best of Show in meads.

Its a nice drink and is doing well in the circuit.

 

[Nerdie]

congrats... Going to try this for the summer...

I don't like my mead too sweet... how sweet is it? I remember making a prickly pear mead with 20lbs of honey.. and it was too sweet.... 14 lbs of honey I liked better...

so you boiled honey for about 2 hours... would u recommend 170 mins like another member did?

I never heard of zinc fortified yeast... is that dead yeast? .1 g? that's a very little, what kind of scale did u use? So that gets boiled right?

Something that always confused me about yeast nutrients (extract). I have some, looks like salt, it's white and crystalized. But isn't there bacteria in it that can contaminate the mead? Are we supposed to boil it? I remember I threw some in while boiling another mead... and it boiled over!!! DOH!!! are we supposed to boil it? If you boil it... is it bad? But if you don't you introduce contaminates... still confuses me...

thanks




The official recipe from 2008 Nov/Dec Zymurgy page 46. Article starts on page 45 - "Mead: Party Like its 1949"

18.5 lb light honey
4.0 g yeast extract or yeast nutrient
0.1 g zinc fortified yeast as nutrient
3 Tablespoon yeast (40g) dried champagne or mead yeast (Prise de Mousse recommended)

Target original gravity 1.130 - 1.138
Approx Final Gravity 1.028-1.038
Alcohol 14 to 15% by volume

Add honey to pot. Do not add water. Gently boil the honey until dark and tastes caramelized.

Add 1 gallon of water, zinc fortified yeast and blend into the "scorched honey" Stir until dissolved well.

Blend hot honey and water mixture to 2 gallons of cold water and add to your primary.

Top up to 5 gallons total volume. Aerate extremely well and add dissolved yeast nutrient (yeast extract)

When temp is below 80 F add re hydrated yeast. Ferment between 70-75 F

It may take 3 weeks to 3 months to finish primary.

Rack and transfer to secondary. Store at cooler temperatures Rack off sediment after six months to a year. Bottle when clear and all fermentation ceased. Cork in wine bottles for long term aging.
__________________

 

[fusa]

I made 1 gallon of this last week. It started fermenting ok, but the past couple of days it has completely stopped. I tried adding more yeast nutrient, and racked it to a secondary, but after a day it is still doing nothing. There was a layer of yeast on the bottom of the 1 gallon jar in the primary. There is no airlock activity, and nothing moving in the must. I used Red Star Pasteur Champagne Yeast, should I have used another type? I let it cool to room temperature before adding the yeast initially. Or is this a very slow fermentation, with no activity. The SG was 1.134, it is about 1.098 now, so plenty of sugar left to ferment (I hope)

After reading the forums a little more, I realize I didn't rehydrate the yeast. Could this have caused a premature end of the fermentation? I haven't used dry yeast in about 15 years so didn't think of rehydrating it. Should I buy more dry yeast and rehydrate then pitch it?

 

[MedsenFey]

I made 1 gallon of this last week. It started fermenting ok, but the past couple of days it has completely stopped.

Check the pH. I have found that meads that have been boiled and skimmed tend to drop their pH even faster than traditionals that haven't been boiled.

 

[fusa]

Yeah looks like it is low. It's hard to tell the difference between the colors, but <=3.4. Should I add something to raise the pH, and more (rehydrated) yeast, or would the additive alone be enough? And how much would be needed for about 1 gallon of must to increase pH to the desired level?

 

[MedsenFey]

If you use potassium bicarbonate, 1-2 grams will be a good start. You don't want to drive the pH way up - you just want to get the yeast moving. I will add that amount and then recheck the pH later to make sure it gets up to about 3.4. If not, I'd add it 1 gram at a time until I get there.

Usually, adjusting the pH will allow the yeast that are already there to become active again and pitching more typically isn't necessary. It does help to have an accurate pH reading - a pH of 3.4 will not stall yeast, but if it is lower than 3.1, it can be a problem.

 

[fusa]

I added 1.5 tsp, the pH is about 3.8 now. I wish I could give a more accurate reading, but the colors on the chart are impossible to tell the difference between 2.8, 3.2 and 3.4.

 

[MedsenFey]

At 3.8 you should be good.

A pH meter is one of the best investments you can make for mead/wine making. (They can be handy for beer too )

 

[fusa]

I'm still not having any luck getting this bochet to start fermenting again. A few hours after raising the pH to 3.8, I rehydrated some EC-1118 yeast for 20 minutes and added it to the must. It started fermenting, but a few hours later it slowed down a lot. Now it has stopped again.

I used honey out of the grocery store, instead of honey from local bee keepers that I usually use. Could this have something to kill yeast in it? I really can't think of anything else that could cause this to stop. It seemed to ferment normally for a few days at the start, but now has completely stopped.

 

[BargainFittings]

It might not have been fermenting if you are reading bubbles. It could just be co2 coming out of solution. Take a gravity reading after a few days to see if the gravity has dropped.

 

[fusa]

I'll give it a week or two and check the SG. It's just in a 1 gallon jar, so I have it in a cabinet in my kitchen, so easy to store out of the way and forget for a while. When I transferred it to a secondary I tasted some, and was really impressed, even if this batch doesn't finish fermenting, I will be making more. I might wait until the winter though, standing over a stove for 1.5 hours in the summer wasn't fun.

 

[Nerdie]

I don't like my mead too sweet... how sweet is it? I remember making a prickly pear mead with 20lbs of honey.. and it was too sweet.... 14 lbs of honey I liked better...

so you boiled honey for about 2 hours... would u recommend 170 mins like another member did?

I never heard of zinc fortified yeast... is that dead yeast? .1 g? that's a very little, what kind of scale did u use? So that gets boiled right?

Something that always confused me about yeast nutrients (extract). I have some, looks like salt, it's white and crystalized. But isn't there bacteria in it that can contaminate the mead? Are we supposed to boil it? I remember I threw some in while boiling another mead... and it boiled over!!! DOH!!! are we supposed to boil it? If you boil it... is it bad? But if you don't you introduce contaminates... still confuses me...

thanks




The official recipe from 2008 Nov/Dec Zymurgy page 46. Article starts on page 45 - "Mead: Party Like its 1949"

18.5 lb light honey
4.0 g yeast extract or yeast nutrient
0.1 g zinc fortified yeast as nutrient
3 Tablespoon yeast (40g) dried champagne or mead yeast (Prise de Mousse recommended)

Target original gravity 1.130 - 1.138
Approx Final Gravity 1.028-1.038
Alcohol 14 to 15% by volume

Add honey to pot. Do not add water. Gently boil the honey until dark and tastes caramelized.

Add 1 gallon of water, zinc fortified yeast and blend into the "scorched honey" Stir until dissolved well.

Blend hot honey and water mixture to 2 gallons of cold water and add to your primary.

Top up to 5 gallons total volume. Aerate extremely well and add dissolved yeast nutrient (yeast extract)

When temp is below 80 F add re hydrated yeast. Ferment between 70-75 F

It may take 3 weeks to 3 months to finish primary.

Rack and transfer to secondary. Store at cooler temperatures Rack off sediment after six months to a year. Bottle when clear and all fermentation ceased. Cork in wine bottles for long term aging.

 

[jbrookeiv]

Anyone brew this one recently? I'm going to be trying it tomorrow.

 

[Revvy]

Does last September count? We did this in conjunction with my 5 year aging 50th birthday Barleywine.

We started the Brochet (burnt mead) on Ed's firepit. We didn't realize what a nightmare that would be. Do not try this at home, or if you do have silicon fire gloves and a back up plan. Or at least use a bigger cast iron pan. The honey is just warming up. Still honey colored.

Here's why you need to have aback up plan and heat retardent gloves so you can lift the pan off the heat.

After too many boilovers we switched to something with more temp control for the mead. It STILL required constant attention. Which luckily Terrapin put his chef skills on the line to be the man of the (several) hour to stir that puppy and keep fiddling with the gas. This was a lot like making roux at long time consuming process. But hopefully worth it. As you can see it is starting to change color.

Brochet getting darker.

For Terrapinchef, this WAS a working lunch.

As you can see the mahogany color of the honey is starting to come out, the colors that we saw were undescribably beautiful. Like fiery sunsets.

The final minutes of the Brochet, deciding at what point we wanted to pull the plug on the color, and halt the boiling was difficult, we wanted to see how deep it would go but we really wanted not to scorch the honey.

The two gallons of Brochet, being aierated. Look how dark it is, and that is after topping off with water and a little bit of one of the other meads. The taste was insane.

Due to the caloric intake of all the alcohol we were making, plus the ribs for dinner. Smitty decides to do a pre dinner workout...or is he genuflecting before the mead gods?

Just cracked a few at National Homebrewday and it was a HUUUGE hit. Folks were coming up after asking me if I was the guy with the burnt mead.

There's a women's mead club that was set up there and even they were impressed.

 

[jbrookeiv]

Does last September count? We did this in conjunction with my 5 year aging 50th birthday Barleywine.



Just cracked a few at National Homebrewday and it was a HUUUGE hit. Folks were coming up after asking me if I was the guy with the burnt mead.

There's a women's mead club that was set up there and even they were impressed.

Nice, sounds great. Can you give me the details on the recipe you used?

 

[Revvy]

Nice, sounds great. Can you give me the details on the recipe you used?

A jug of honey from the grocery store....Water....Yeast (I believe it was montrachet....heat source.......

This wasn't rocket science in the 5th century and it really doesn't need to be over thought today.

 

[jbrookeiv]

A jug of honey from the grocery store....Water....Yeast (I believe it was montrachet....heat source.......

This wasn't rocket science in the 5th century and it really doesn't need to be over thought today.

Cool, I was just wondering the ratio of water to honey. I bought a 5lb bottle of honey at Sam's Club yesterday with the intention of doing this, but I'm thinking I might want to do a 5 gallon batch since it's so time consuming.

 

[Revvy]

Cool, I was just wondering the ratio of water to honey. I bought a 5lb bottle of honey at Sam's Club yesterday with the intention of doing this, but I'm thinking I might want to do a 5 gallon batch since it's so time consuming.

We just boiled it down, then hit it with some water to cool it, then split it into two gallon jugs, and topped off with more water. We just eyeballed the water amount. Pretty much following loosely what the youtube video said.

 

[biochemedic]

I wanted to add to this thread today as I've just finished wrapping up my first bochet mead! There's some things that I've discovered, which I think I've seen hinted at on other pages/sources, but I think they bear repeating (read: big safety issues!):

1) when honey boils, the apparent volume increases DRAMATICALLY! 18 lbs of honey is a couple inches in the bottom of my kettle...once boil hit, the level of "liquid" is at *least* 4 to 5 times higher! Bottom line: you need a MUCH bigger kettle than you might think...

2) the boil requires constant attention to fiddle with the heat level, and needs to be stirred almost constantly to prevent even further rises in the boil and subsequent boil over.

3) Boiling honey is damn f*&King hot! And it likes to splash up and out with the bigger bubbles...my ring and pinky fingers will tell you that you would be well served to wear some sort of protective glove, or probably even better, a *really* long spoon.

4) When you add the water at the end of the boiling, DO NOT add it quickly. I mean this...literally add it like an ounce or so at a time. When water hits hot honey, it boils instantly and sprays damn f*&King hot boiling honey everywhere.

5) Do this outside, but be prepared to battle the bees, wasps and other assorted insect fiends...it would help to have a partner just to shoo/swat them away.

All in all though, my brew was very successful, and I'm really excited at how this will turn out. It smells awesome, is a beautiful shade of mahogany brown, and the hydrometer sample tastes like drinking a perfectly roasted marshmallow....

 

[BargainFittings]

Just racked last years batch to a keg and made 10 gallons.

Battled the bees. The weather was nice. This batch I went a shade lighter mostly because I was tired of listening to the swarm.

 

[Hovercar]

I think I'll wait until winter to brew this ^_^

 

[biochemedic]

I just bottled my bochet the other day, and it tastes awesome...it cleared very well right in primary, so I just bottled it from there. The FG is 1.007, and it has just enough residual sweetness that I left it alone. I used the Wyeast Dry Mead strain, which should have dried it out completely, so I wonder if the boiling process may have created some unfermentable carbs? At any rate, I'm extremely pleased with my first attempt at this process, and think this will be a real winner once it ages out a little more (it's really good even now)...already looking forward to Mead Day next August.

 

[Latka]

I think I'll wait until winter to brew this ^_^

Frick. I live in Hawaii. I can see the little bastards lining up now... must combat my understanding that bees are good with my desire not to become a pincushion!

Want to taste Bochet Mead > Worry about getting stung

Game on!

 

[GurraG]

Bochet is now next on my "to brew" list. I'm thinking that the caramel character of bochet would go well with fruit, and I understand that some of you have made bochet/cyser, however, I am inclined towards something that might complement the caramel with some fruity tangyness. What sayeth ye about raspberries, has anyone tried that?

 

[usfmikeb]

I've been brewing beer for several years, but just started on meads this year. I believe this one needs to onto my list!

 

[usfmikeb]

I was so interested in this, I made it this AM. Cooked up 2.8 lbs of clover honey for a little over an hour, and took it off the heat as soon as I tasted marshmallow tones. Going to use Montrachet with it, but wanted a bit of residual sweetness for this one, so I added in 2.5 oz of lactose when I was dissolving the caramelized honey, which should leave me with 6-7 points in the finished product.

As an aside, my wife was very intrigued by this, and decided that the next time I make this, that she wants to use half of it for making chocolate covered caramels.

 

[dummkauf]

Cooking this one up now. Picked up 24Lbs(two 12lbs jugs) of blue ribbon clover honey from Midwest this afternoon just for this brew. I got a little carried away pouring honey in my pot from the second jug O' honey, so I wound up with 19.5Lbs of honey instead of 18.5, though I'm sure it'll be just fine.

Anyway, it's starting to boil now so I am getting ready to start stirring!!! Hope this one turns out as good as it sounds!

 

[Sharkman20]

I'll be making this one tomorrow with 18 lbs of blackberry honey which I will carmelize, and a pound of orange blossom honey that I will add in after the mixture has cooled. I decided to go for that over the costco honey since I have a local beekeeping supply that sells varietal honey at 5 dollars per pound and I'd rather support them than costco. lol I also picked up 40g of EC-1118 per the recipe, so we will see how this one goes, but I have high hopes for this batch. If this ferments out to 15% I'll be happy but I'm fine if it goes over that since I plan on aging this a while.

I'm just wondering with 19 lbs of honey how much it will dry out with the EC-1118, since I want it to be strong but still have sweetness to it. I'll be shooting for a 1.140 starting gravity. I couldn't find any zinc fortified yeast, but at 0.1g for a 5 gallon batch I can't imagine that would have an impact on the final product. I'll be using some fermaid K for the nutrient. Any suggestions or ideas? Wish me luck.