Imperial Russian bochet

[bodhiboi]

I need advice from someone who's done both because I've done neither, I want to add roster barley, hops, lactose for mouthfeel, and a little coffee for more flavor, going high alcohol and competely dry. I need.some thoughts and a few recipe ideas, mainly ingredient quantities and the like. Thanks

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[Arpolis]

I have not done an imperial Russian yet but have done many bochet. I will be curios if we can even find someone to have done both. I'll let you know how I might handle this and you can take it with a grain of salt.

5 gallon

12lb honey
9lb Muntons Pale Ale Malt
15 oz Muntons Roasted Barley
10 oz Dingemans Special B
10 oz Weyermann Chocolate Wheat
5 oz Weyermann CaraFoam (Dextrin)
4oz Pellet Hops Challenger (UK)
2oz Pellet Hops Kent Golding (UK)
1oz lightly roasted coffee
4 tsp yeast nutrient
2 tsp yeast energizer
Yeast: Red star Cote des Blanc

You will need a large pot for this. Honey expands up to 4 times its volume when it starts to boil so keep that in mind. Mix honey and water at a ration of 1 to 1 . Should be a gallon of honey and a gallon of water. In a muslin bag mix all your crushed grains and place that in your honey water. Use a double boiler if possible and bring temp up between 150*F and 153*F and hold for 60 minutes. Remove grains and add to brew bucket with 2 gallons of water and allow to steep while finishing the honey. Add 1 quart boiling water to the honey slowly. Place directly on flame now and on a medium heat start to boil honey mixture. As it starts to boil add in your challenger hops. After 30 min add in the Goldings. After another 15min add in the coffee. All of that in nylon or muslin bags. Hold that an additional 15 min and then remove the flame and all hops/coffee. Cool in ice bath until you can pitch that into the brew bucket. Remove grains before pitching the honey. Mix your nutrients together and add 4 tsp now. You will add the other two tsp one tsp at a time every 24 hours for the next two days. Top off with water to 5 gallons. Rehydrate yeast and pitch when temps are all good. Let ferment for a couple weeks. Then rack into carboy and airlock. Rack every 30 days till no sediment drops. Bottle when you feel like but this should probably be aged till about 6+ months minimum and best over a year.

This should ferment close to dry and should not need anything for mouthfeel. The honey should take care of that with some of the un fermentable sugars you get with the caramelization. I choose red star Cote Des Blanc because it should throw some fruity esters and ferment dry if you keep it on the warmer side of the fermenting temps. If you really want this dry though then Lalvin K1v-1116 would be a good choice. If you want a smaller batch this should be easily divisible into a 1 or 3 gallon version.

 

[bodhiboi]

Thank you very much, I really appreciate the detail. I'm gunnu go for a three gallon, it's my biggest ccarboy.id rather get three gallons of terrible booze than only have one gallon of something I love. I asked on another thread on facebook, but do you think going all grain is feasible? I've made a few beers and helped a buddy do an all grain, but I wouldn't even say I'm good at beer. I do tend to be real lucky with mead tho. One more thing, I want it dark and powerful flavor, at what point should u boil my honey to, thick gooey black stuff, or just real dark without the strange texture change and burning.

 

[Arpolis]

The details I listed above with the two hours of cooking at 150*F ish and then the additional hour of full boil should get the honey pretty dark. At the end of the 2hours still remove the hops and coffee and just drip a single drop of the honey on a white plate. Let it run or wipe it a little to thin it and you can see its color well that way. If it is too light for you then boil for an additional 20 min and check again. Repeat till it is what you like.

Going all grain is not that scary. With beers the difficult thing is the whole sparging method and also the fact that you have to get the mash temps exactly correct or you do not get a good conversion rate with the enzymes with your malt. But with this you have little to worry. The sparging step is replaced with the part of letting those grains steep in the brew bucket after the mash. And let's say you screw up temps in the mash and your conversion is terrible. Who cares you have plenty of honey with fermentable sugars so you will still get a ABV anywhere between 12% - 14%. You can try and use the extract equivalent but the above steps are simplified from standard all grain brewing to match more mead styled brewing and should be hard to screw up.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

I've actually done both! I haven't combined them into one though. I think the recipe above is far off where you want to be. It's going to be a SG close to 1.200 ! and will NOT ferment anywhere close to dry. No yeast is going to get that anywhere near where you would reasonable want to end up.

I would boil the honey separately from the wort and add it in after. Follow Arpolis's First paragraph above on cooking the honey. For 3 Gallons I would do something where the grains you are adding are specialty only, especially if you're concerned about converting grains.

—3 Gallons—
9 Pounds Honey, Boiled to your likeness
1 Pound Roasted Barley Steeped for 25 minutes
0.5 Pound Chocolate Malt Steeped for 25 minutes
4oz Lactose (add after the boil)

HOPS- Boil the hops in your steeped Malt wort.
.5 oz Northern brewer @60
.5 oz Golding @30
.5 oz Northern brewer @10
.5 oz Golding @ 0

Cool your wort below 150, dissolve in your cooked honey. Add healthy amounts of nutrients and oxygen. Follow your standard SNA from there to completion.

 

[Arpolis]

I've actually done both! I haven't combined them into one though. I think the recipe above is far off where you want to be. It's going to be a SG close to 1.200 ! and will NOT ferment anywhere close to dry. No yeast is going to get that anywhere near where you would reasonable want to end up.

I would boil the honey separately from the wort and add it in after. Follow Arpolis's First paragraph above on cooking the honey. For 3 Gallons I would do something where the grains you are adding are specialty only, especially if you're concerned about converting grains.

—3 Gallons—
9 Pounds Honey, Boiled to your likeness
1 Pound Roasted Barley Steeped for 25 minutes
0.5 Pound Chocolate Malt Steeped for 25 minutes
4oz Lactose (add after the boil)

HOPS- Boil the hops in your steeped Malt wort.
.5 oz Northern brewer @60
.5 oz Golding @30
.5 oz Northern brewer @10
.5 oz Golding @ 0

Cool your wort below 150, dissolve in your cooked honey. Add healthy amounts of nutrients and oxygen. Follow your standard SNA from there to completion.

See there now that is a real expert on the subject. I am terrible at figuring sugar additions from malted grains. Glad you chimed in Marshmallowblue.

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

See there now that is a real expert on the subject. I am terrible at figuring sugar additions from malted grains. Glad you chimed in Marshmallowblue.

I can't take all the credit, I just plugged your recipe into brewtoad because it sounded really high.

 

[Arpolis]

Brew toad huh? Need to look that up. Not familiar with it.

 

[bodhiboi]

Allright, let me dumb this down for myself and you tell me if I got the idea. Boil my grains, remove grain, keep boiling and add hops, remove hops, add cooked honey, and from then on treat like any other mead. The only real difference being instead of water I used wort. It honestly sounds too easy, tell me I'm not missing something crucial here. And thank you both for the imput

 

[MarshmallowBlue]

Allright, let me dumb this down for myself and you tell me if I got the idea. Boil my grains, remove grain, keep boiling and add hops, remove hops, add cooked honey, and from then on treat like any other mead. The only real difference being instead of water I used wort. It honestly sounds too easy, tell me I'm not missing something crucial here. And thank you both for the imput

Almost:

Steep your grains, don't boil them (you will extract serious tannins). If you are just using the specialty grains they can be steeped in 160 Degree water for 20-30 minutes. Then remove the grains and begin to boil that water. When it's boiling, add your hops in those increments.

(So when I say @ 60 or @30 it means with that many minutes left in the boil.)

When all your hops are done, take it off heat and add your lactose (if you go that route). Chill your wort with your preferred method. Then add the cooked honey. and pitch yeast when the temp is appropriate, then treat it like a regular mead.

As far as removing hops: If you use pellets they will dissolved into the beer/mead and settle out by your first racking. If you put them in boiling bags or what have you, you can pull them out. If you used whole leaf hops, you can pour your mead through a paint strainer bag and squeeze the juice out (those whole hops hold a lot of must/wort that you want in your beer/ mead)

 

[bodhiboi]

Alright, I didn't realy mean boil the grains, but I won't blame you for clarification, it's what I asked for. If I wanted to go very high alcohol, but keep all the good flavors I'm making, what yeast would you suggest I start with, and what yeast should i finish with to get that extra bit of alcohol out of my sugars?