Medieval Burnt Mead!

[JJDMusic]

Hey EvilTOJ,

How many pounds of honey did you use and how big was that pot?

 

[digdan]

Any more updates? I really need to know how it tastes, cause I was thinking of attempting a recipe that blends roasted chicory at flame-out.

 

[jdinger29]

Any updates here? Some great threads! This sounds like a good one to try outside (so there is no house burning) in the winter (so there are no bees) and with a partner.

Nice job everyone.

 

[rebeltruce]

I gave this a whirl last night.

4lbs Organic Clover Honey
1 Packet Cotes des Blancs Yeast
1 t Fermax Nutrient

Cooked the Hnoey for a total of about an hour and 20 minutes.
Let it cool down for 15 minutes and added Spring Water very slowly.

It took a few times of just adding a quarter cup or so of water and stirring before I could add enough water at one time to totally cool things down.

Added the Honey to a 1 gallon carboy and top it off with enough spring water to come up to the bottom of the bottle neck.

Waited until the jug was no longer warm to the touch and added the Fermax, shook the jug up for a minute or two. Then added the yeast and shook again for a couple minutes.

I took a few pictures along the way...

This first one is after 15 minutes of boiling.

This is at the 30 minutes mark.

The 45 minute mark.

One hour.

About 1 hour and 20 minutes.

Cooling down in the carboy.

My Partner in crime and helper extraordinaire.....Piglet.


It's blurping the airlock about once every 10 seconds or so this morning so I guess I'm on my way.

This is only the second Mead I've ever tried in my very brief Home Brewing experience. I did not take any kind of readings with my Hydrometer. I'm not really clear on how to use the thing yet.

I'm wondering how long I should let it go and when and if I should rack it to another carboy?

If I do rack it to another carboy should I then let it just sit for the rest of the process or should I be looking 6 months down the road and then move it into another jug for the long haul?

 

[Kauai_Kahuna]

Piglet looks like a cool brewing buddy to have around.

Did you wait till black bubbles where bursting black smoke? (translated to what we now call English).
I'm thinking maybe adding a little acid be it DAP or lemon juice would help with the inverting and carmalizing. I just think I would have to cover my entire stove and counter top with tin foil before I tried this indoors.

 

[rebeltruce]

I didn't take it quite that far, I did wait until there was the slightest change in the color of the smoke coming frome the bubbles. The smell had changed at that point also, I never noticed the toasted marshmellow smell, mine seemed to begin to smell a bit cinged. Didn't taste that way at all, it tasted like a very deep carmel.

It also never really stopped rising up in the pot either. My pot had a two gallon capacity, and it came close to over flowing once or twice. I tried to keep the heat right in the medium range on my stove, and that seemed to work well.

The pot cleaned up easily I let it soak overnight, I only had one mishap regarding the stove top. Like I siad it came close to going over once or twice one of the times I started stirring it very vigorously and I flipped a globe onto the stove. Other than that things went very well consider I had four pounds of molten honey to deal with.

 

[jdinger29]

It looks awesome rebeltruce! What an amazing color.

 

[BeerRunner]

I tried mine a few days ago. Burned it to motor oil color. Champagne yeast. At 8 months, it tastes a lot like a Port wine. I like it. I'm definitely going to scale up the recipe.

 

[Yan]

I tried a 1-gallon test, didn't fully burn the honey, and used an amount of raw honey too, along with some raisins. It's in secondary now. It has a nice toffee/honey smell to it and a beautiful orange-amber colour.

I am going to experiment with different levels of caramelization when I can afford more honey. I like the idea of using caramelized honey in mead in a way similar to using roasted malts in beer.

 

[LightningInABottle]

Did you wait till black bubbles where bursting black smoke? (translated to what we now call English).

This is the translation
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEVERAGES FOR INVALIDS-
BOUCHET. To make six sixths of bouchet, take six pints of fine sweet honey, and put it in a cauldron on the fire and boil it, and stir continually until it starts to grow, and you see that it is producing bubbles like small globules which burst, and as they burst emit a little smoke which is sort of dark: and then stir, and then add seven sixths of water and boil until it reduces to six sixths again, and keep stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it is just warm; and then strain it through a cloth bag, and then put it in a cask and add one chopine (half-litre) of beer-yeast, for it is this which makes it the most piquant, (and if you use bread yeast, however much you like the taste, the colour will be insipid), and cover it well and warmly to work. And if you want to make it very good, add an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grains of Paradise and cloves in equal amounts, except for the cloves of which there should be less, and put them in a cloth bag and throw in. And after two or three days, if the bouchet smells spicy enough and is strong enough, take out the spice-bag and squeeze it and put it in the next barrel you make. And thus you will be able to use these same spices three or four times.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have also seen this line, "which is sort of dark", translated as "blackish"

 

[Lunarpancake]

hrmmm.........bookmarked this thread for later brewage

 

[Killinger]

I've been meaning to make one of these since the zymurgy article. I needed to borrow some courage from others, though, so thanks for that. I finally made a 3 gallon batch today.

I don't know what mileage others are getting boiling the honey on an outdoor burner, but there's no way I would've let this go even an hour. I had it on my old turkey fryer burner for 45 minutes and it looked like coal tar and was giving off an eye-stinging white smoke. The smell at this point was like a glorious meadow of wildflowers aflame in napalm. You know that scene in The Wizard of Oz where they're running through the poppies, and fall asleep, and the good witch waves a wand, makes it snow, the poppies die, and the heroes wake up and dash off? Yeah, well, imagine their benefactor had not been Glenda the Good Witch of the North but Sgt. Slaughter who showed up with a flame thrower. That's what it smelled like. Exactly.

I used 9# generic honey and boiled in a 7 gallon kettle. It foamed up to half-way and splattered a few drops onto the garage floor, but otherwise no drama. I let it cool a bit, threw in a few drops of water to see how explosive it would be, then dumped in ~2 gallons. After it cooled further, I took a gravity reading, and topped up with more water to 3 gallons. The OG is 1.100.

Here's a pic from the first hydro sample...

Happy brewing, y'all,

 

[Killinger]

PS, SWMBO would be happy to drink the must as is. To me, it tastes like a shot of espresso with maybe two tablespoons of sugar, to her it tastes like delicious burned marshmallows.

 

[conpewter]

Thinking of brewing this up this week, I have enough honey for 5 gallon batch (15 lbs). Thinking about getting the spices described in the above translation. Any ideas on grains of paradise locally? Also "long pepper"?

Yeast, Thinking S-05 (to stick with "beer yeast"), I do like sweeter wines so I'd probably like a sweeter mead. I also have Nottingham, Wyeast 3068 (weizen yeast), and Montrachet. I have yeast nutrient as well.

 

[wayneb]

Grains of Paradise come from West Africa. The name comes from Medieval spice traders looking for a way to inflate the price - it was claimed that the peppery seeds grew only in Eden, and had to be collected as they floated down the rivers out of paradise. They are sharp tasting, like black pepper, and in the Middle Ages were used as a cheaper substitute for black peppercorns.

 

[Yan]

long pepper comes from the plant piper longum. It's a lot like black pepper, only a little spicier on average, and the dried flower cones are used instead of the fruits. Black pepper would be a fine substitute.

 

[conpewter]

Cool, I'll try to get some grains of paradise from whole foods, and sub black pepper for long pepper. I don't know about the amounts though.

Any thoughts on yeast? Also should I do 3 lb per gallon or 4?

 

[conpewter]

For the spices, should I grind them or put them in whole?

 

[LightningInABottle]

I would put spices in whole because it is less of a mess. If you grind them put them in a spice bag (cheesecloth).

 

[fatbloke]

Damn! that's a brilliant thread!

The "suck it and see" approach is pretty much how I make all my meads. I just can't be bothered to get anal about it (though maybe some of them would turn out better if I did.....)

It'll definitely be one to think about!

 

[conpewter]

Brewing it up right now! I'm using 17 lb of honey for a 5 gallon batch. I'll use half an ounce of each of the spices (quarter ounce of cloves). I'll do that in secondary. I found another translation below, looks like I'm using more honey than the traditional recipe, but I want something that will age well.

From what I surmize from the website, the below recipe is for 48 pints (6 gallons) and uses 6 pints of honey (9 lbs.)


Perhaps this recipe from Le Menagier de Paris, c. 1393, (Power's translation, 1928, pp. 293-4) will be of some use to you.

"BEVERAGES FOR THE SICK - BOCHET
To make six sesters of bochet take six pints of very soft honey and set it in a cauldron on the fire, and boil it and stir it for as long as it goes on rising and as long as you see it throwing up liquid in little bubbles which burst and in bursting give off a little blackish steam; and then move it, and put in seven sesters of water and boil them until it is reduced to six sesters, always stirring. And then put it in a tub to cool until it be just warm, and then run it through a sieve, and afterwards put it in a cask and add half a pint of leaven of beer, for it is this which makes it piquant (and if you put in leaven of bread, it is as good for the taste, but the colour will be duller), and cover it warmly and well when you prepare it. And if you would make it very good, add thereto an ounce of ginger, long pepper, grain of Paradise and cloves, as much of the one as of the other, save that there shall be less of the cloves, and put them in a linen bag and cast it therein. And when it hath been therein for two or three days, and the brochet tastes enough of the spices and is sufficiently piquant, take out the bag and squeeze it and put it in the other barrel that you are making. And thus this powder will serve you well two or three times over."

 

[rebeltruce]

I love reading that old recipe....I'm going to do a 5 gallon batch with 12lbs of honey.

I'm going to have to cook the honey in 3 batches, 4lbs each batch. I have a couple 6g packs of Munton's Ale yeast will most likely use one of them for this 5 gallon batch, along with some nutrients.

Planning on bottling letting it go until I'm 65...

 

[LightningInABottle]

That is the other one I found. Note that is says blackish. If you watch the first video you see the smoke get dark colored, but the guy keeps pushing for "black" smoke. I would end my boil at that point. Thanks for posting the other translation.

Now to obtain a large enough kettel for a 5-6 gallon batch....

 

[conpewter]

I boiled for 6.5 hours (very low heat to prevent boilover). ~1.5 gallons of honey in a 7 gallon pot, still wanted to climb out and all over the stove.

After the boil I added in about a gallon of water, got it back to boiling, then added 3 gallons of fridge temp water to cool it down, used an auto-siphon to put it in the 6 gallon carboy. I haven't taken a gravity reading yet (I did pull a sample mid siphon.)

OG looks like 1.132

 

[scone]

Ah no, it burned because I had it over an open flame for 30 minutes, not because it's in a SS pot. Plus, this thing is called BURNT mead, it's supposed to burn! It could also be because I used a rather thin bottomed pot, rather than my nice sandwich layered bottomed pot instead.

Hey EvilTOJ: How big was your SS pot? I'm thinking about doing this with my cheapo 3.5 gallon (very thin) SS pot over an open fire. Is this a bad idea? I figure if I stir like crazy I can prevent it from charring to the bottom of the pot, but maybe this is wishful thinking on my part.

Somehow the sage and rosemary flavors and aroma have morphed into a wintergreeny-minty flavor with a bit of resinous pine. It's very good. I was a bit worried it would taste too medicinal/culinary herby, but that's not the case at all. I'm seriously going to have to explore that herb combination in a gruit. This could seriously be the next big thing -- it's that good! I can already imagine it, sage and rosemary porter. Trust me, it's 100 times better than it sounds.

This sounds amazing. I think I'm going to do exactly this for my first attempt. Do you happen to remember how long you had your herbs in there before you pulled them out? I'm going to try a "handful" of each myself.

 

[EvilTOJ]

My SS pot was 5 gallons and thin and cheap as can be. I only used my thinner pot because I didn't want burnination on my 'good' 5 gallon SS pot. As long as you stir it and don't let the leavings cool in the pot I think you'll be alright.

 

[Kauai_Kahuna]

I just did a 5 gallon batch of this using 12 lbs of Suebee amber honey in my 7.5 gallon aluminium pot on medium heat. It took just over 3 and a half hours to get down to the described levels, and it had foamed up to the 5 gallon level on my pot. So roughly 1 gallon foamed up to 5 gallons.

I checked the temperature at this "burnt" level and it was 297F, just around 5 degrees short of the "hard crack" level of 302F. I realize now how important it is to get some water in there slowly, but if you let it get hard your in trouble.

One other very important note, I live on the 9th floor and I had a screen door closed going to the balcony, around an hour into the boil I noticed around 10 bee's trying to fly in. Checked the front of the unit and there were a number of bee's trying to fly in there also.

 

[Ace_Club]

Not to get off topic, but has anybody sampled a finished, aged product of this burnt mead yet? I am intrigued, but want to read a couple reviews of the finished product before embarking on the journey.

 

[scone]

Is anyone concerned that the 1118 might take it too dry and the burnt flavor will dominate without enough sweetness to back it up? What other yeasts are you guys using? Notty was mentioned... I've never made a mead and I plan to start with this one.

 

[conpewter]

Is anyone concerned that the 1118 might take it too dry and the burnt flavor will dominate without enough sweetness to back it up? What other yeasts are you guys using? Notty was mentioned... I've never made a mead and I plan to start with this one.

Using S-05 and Nottingham on mine (recipe called for "beer yeast") I only had one package of each so I pitched them both. It lagged for a couple days so I made a starter last night of wyeast 1028 (London Ale). Not sure if I'll pitch that now since fermentation has really pickedup. I figure if the recipe called for beer yeast... it may well have been a mixture of different strains anyway.

After fermentation is done I'll put in the Grains of paradise, Long pepper, ginger and clove for a few days.