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Yeah I knew what you meant, the thing with Bochets is that the yeasts CAN'T digest all of the sugar in the first place since you caremalized some of them so its really easy to get a stuck ferment with a weak yeast, you are going to get some sweetness from caremalized sugars that cant be fermented so your SG is going to missguide you a little bit as to the potential. I would suggest a strong yeast that will ferment well, start low, step feed more caremalized honey, and maybe start off the ferment with a little bit of raw honey at the start to give the yeasts something easy to work on? WVMJ

(caint spell Can't, different from can)
 
Good point, but this will be my second bochet. The one I bottled the other day did get stuck for a bit, though it turned out okay in the end. I'll think about what yeast I'm going to use; but do you have any insight as to the question I asked, about adding cacao?
 
WVMJ said:
...the thing with Bochets is that the yeasts can digest all of the sugar in the first place since you caremalized some of them so its really easy to get a stuck ferment with a weak yeast, you are going to get some sweetness from caremalized sugars that cant be fermented so your SG is going to missguide you a little bit as to the potential. I would suggest a strong yeast that will ferment well, start low, step feed more caremalized honey, and maybe start off the ferment with a little bit of raw honey at the start to give the yeasts something easy to work on? WVMJ
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Sorry, but this looks like a probable teory of someone that did not do a bochet before.. There is not much differance between bochet and other kind of meads, and the SG differance is minimal.
 
Morit said:
Sorry, but this looks like a probable teory of someone that did not do a bochet before.. There is not much differance between bochet and other kind of meads, and the SG differance is minimal.
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I would bet that WVMJ has made more mead and wine than most 5 or 6 of us put together, including bochet.

And it's not a "teory"... none of the bochet I have done has attenuated as far as would have been predicted if it was a 'normal' mead. If you've experienced otherwise, perhaps you have not caramelized the sugar as much as others have, or perhaps you have an infection with wild yeast or a bacteria that is able to metabolize the more complex sugars created by the caramelization process.
 
For my first bochet, I used WLP735 (French White Wine Yeast), and I'm happy with the sweetness there. As I said, I did get a stuck fermentation for a bit, but managed to get things back on track. So the reminders to look out for this and beware are much appreciated, thanks! I may go for the same yeast on the next batch.

The reason I mentioned sweetness is if I use cacao to flavor the bochet, I don't want the flavor profile to lean too heavily towards the bitter side. Bio, I see that you have a cocobochet bulk aging right now. I'm sure it's too early to say for sure how it's turning out, but how much cocoa did you use (1 gal batch?), and in what form? How happy are you with it?

I started going through your posts, but you're prolific! :)
 
I used to post a lot more...life gets in the way...my cocobochet is meant to be a leap year mead, but I still need to get off my @ss and make a bottling plan....2016 is coming up fast!

For my palate, and I don't usually like sweet meads or drinks in general, you do still need some sweetness in a bochet...I have always back sweetened dispite the residual sweetness from the caramelization process.

I used dry cocoa powder, and I'd have to check my notes to remember how many ounces per gallon...
 
While I am NOT an expert on anything, mead or otherwise, last weekend we opened a bottle of Bochet we made and it was so smooth like good bourbon, colored a nice caramel brown and we have to put a mortitorium on drinking to quickly so it can age even more. If you can get your hands on some BeeCulture magazines we did a whole article on making Bochets as a way for beekeepers to use honey that might not be as attractive to sell fresh, we went to a brew your own place that had 25 gallon kettles and dumped a 5 gallon pail of honey in it and cooked it for hours, smelled the whole block, people coming into the shop seeking that compelling smell that they have never experienced before. We got it very dark, grey smoke puffing out the top, but stopped short of pitch black as we didnt know how hard it was going to be to clean the kettle (turns out it was very easy). So you are right, its a theory, might even be wrong, that the point about theories is you get to keep testing them over and over. WVMJ


Morit said:
Sorry, but this looks like a probable teory of someone that did not do a bochet before.. There is not much differance between bochet and other kind of meads, and the SG differance is minimal.
Click to expand...
 
Yes on the nibs, we put ours in the secondary, it did get some bitterness that aged out in the secondary, adding vanilla beans and oak helped round things out, and we backsweetened with some more caremalized honey. The amount to add is going to be your personal preference, if you dont put in enough at the start you can always add more later and let it age some more on the nibs, we didnt want a chocolate mead with this, we wanted well rounded flavors that worked well together, burnt honey reaches out to vanialla, oak and chocolate as partners. We also have one with dried elderberries in it, that is a bit of an advanced bochetomel for us, its going to age for a couple years to let all those tannins dance. WVMJ
 
biochemedic said:
I would bet that WVMJ has made more mead and wine than most 5 or 6 of us put together, including bochet.

And it's not a "teory"... none of the bochet I have done has attenuated as far as would have been predicted if it was a 'normal' mead. If you've experienced otherwise, perhaps you have not caramelized the sugar as much as others have, or perhaps you have an infection with wild yeast or a bacteria that is able to metabolize the more complex sugars created by the caramelization process.
Click to expand...

WVMJ said:
While I am NOT an expert on anything, mead or otherwise, last weekend we opened a bottle of Bochet we made and it was so smooth like good bourbon, colored a nice caramel brown and we have to put a mortitorium on drinking to quickly so it can age even more. If you can get your hands on some BeeCulture magazines we did a whole article on making Bochets as a way for beekeepers to use honey that might not be as attractive to sell fresh (...) We got it very dark, grey smoke puffing out the top, but stopped short of pitch black as we didnt know how hard it was going to be to clean the kettle (turns out it was very easy). So you are right, its a theory, might even be wrong, that the point about theories is you get to keep testing them over and over. WVMJ
Click to expand...

Not ment to offend anyone. And by that answer I see that you are an expert, just a modest one ;)
With my experience (and I have some with meads, less with bochets, including one that I burnet so much I think it is overburnt.. but I'll wait a year or two and return to it to see how it went) the differance was so minimal that I would not think about it for too long, certainly would not mention it to someone making it for a first time - unnessesarry information for some one having many, new informations at once.
Maybe it is becouse I try to have my meads sweet, so I add "too much honey" for yeast to handle or I backsweet afterwards. Maybe I use good yeast and good nourishments (cant find a better word, and english is not my primary, sorry)..
 
No worries Morit, my reply was kind of harsh too...apologies for that...
I would bet you are correct that the reason you've not noted any difference was that you intentionally started with a very high gravity that would stall the yeast before reaching a true terminal gravity.

biochemedic said:
I used dry cocoa powder, and I'd have to check my notes to remember how many ounces per gallon...
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I used a little over 3 oz per gallon (20 oz total for a 6 gal batch.) It gets added after the first water additions but while still fairly warm, so that it's easier to "dissolve." Actually all you really get is a suspension, and lot of the cocoa powder eventually drops with the trub when the primary settles down...I eventually rack it into a secondary and let it bulk age...often there is another layer of settling after transfer. I have my current batch bulk aging in a corney keg...
 
biochemedic said:
I would bet you are correct that the reason you've not noted any difference was that you intentionally started with a very high gravity that would stall the yeast before reaching a true terminal gravity..
Click to expand...

Yet still I always get to the alcohol content that my yeast are suppose to get.
 
Morit said:
Yet still I always get to the alcohol content that my yeast are suppose to get.
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Right...you are reaching your yeast's tolerance before the sugar is running out, which is why you aren't seeing that potential difference in terminal gravity between a caramelized honey and regular honey...
 
TeufelHundenM198 said:
Here's a glass from the bochet I posted about on post #258.

14693456962_88af44b145_c.jpg


~15 months, not too shabby. I tried to get a shot in front of the sun, but the camera wasn't happy with me... no light penetrated it. :D I had a little wine tasting with 25 people attending, the bochet was one of 6 meads I had for everyone to try, and it came in a very close second behind a raspberry vanilla melomel. Most of the people who really like it didn't drink a whole lot, preferring to sip it and enjoy all the various flavors. 1-2 glasses each is all.

I'm going to do this one again, but I'm not going to use a blend of honey... just some of the wildflower honey from my own hives. I'm also going to take it off the heat and cool it the split second it turns black. Last time I let it boil for a while longer. I've got a gallon of the first batch left which I'll leave to age for another year or so. There's almost a bite to this before the sweetness and marshmallow and toffee come to you. I'd like to see if that calms down a bit, or if it's a matter of technique. If that's the case, I'll know in a year or so when my next batch is ready to drink. :D

Of all my wine tasting friends, exactly zero of them have even heard of Bochet before. I like that this tends to be kind of an oddball to folks outside of the mead world, and you just can't beat that jet black color in the glass. I'm going to keep some of this on hand at all times.
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I opened up a bottle of that same batch, ~2 years old, plus or minus a bit of time.

The bite I first described really calmed down. It's no longer a sharpness followed by the sweet. The Toffee flavors have come to the front, nearly replacing the marshmallow. It's more of a well rounded wine... a bit less wild on the tongue. :D

I still have a couple bottles left. I'll open one per year from now on.
 
Well I think I may have over bolied my 1 gallon batch what do you all think, my whole house was pretty smoky and my 4lbs of wildflower looked like this after

20151007_164925.jpg
 
Why did you stop halfwaythru? Looks like you did a good job, might need a little more headroom for your yeast to foam up, next winter this is going to taste good. WVMJ
 
Did not read through the entire thread but did anyone notice the resemblance to essentia bina? Essentially, this was first wort runnings which porter brewers would boil down and actually set on fire to create a black mas of caramelised goo, which would colour and flavour the brew.
This burnt honey looks very similar, idea-wise, but then again, I've never seen nor tasted essentia bina, so what do I know?
 
Well I stopped half way through because I made the mistake of making this inside out of fear of being swarmed by bees lol. Instead my whole downstairs filled with smoke, setting off all my smoke alarms, which automatically call the local fire department who then showed up at my door that is when I took it off heat
 
nettekdl said:
Well I stopped half way through because I made the mistake of making this inside out of fear of being swarmed by bees lol. Instead my whole downstairs filled with smoke, setting off all my smoke alarms, which automatically call the local fire department who then showed up at my door that is when I took it off heat
Click to expand...

The only mistake was making 1 gal. I have some from a few years ago that is tasting even better. Because the fire dept. showed up does that mean they are coming back for samples?
 
They are right across the street so I suppose I could get them a sample if it comes out lol. However having never made this before I used wyeast dry mead on reccomendation of the mead guy at my lhbs, I pitched the whole thing into the 1 gallon batch and now after 48hrs there has been 0 activity. Common for this yeast or should I re pitch with a different yeast?
 
This makes me wonder if you can make belgian candi syrup, and ferment it in a similar process to mead to make a unique type of wine. What this guy is doing is more or less the process for making the syrup
 
Just happened along this thread by accident and read it all the way through salivating. I've never made mead before, but I think I'll try a 5 gallon batch this weekend. I don't have any experience with it, but has anybody considered distillers yeast?
 
PedalPirate said:
Just happened along this thread by accident and read it all the way through salivating. I've never made mead before, but I think I'll try a 5 gallon batch this weekend. I don't have any experience with it, but has anybody considered distillers yeast?
Click to expand...

My first response to that is "why?" If you're already getting 12-15% alcohol (which seems reasonably possible) with regular yeast, why bother with distiller's yeast?
 
Dunno. Just a thought. By caramelizing some of the sugars you don't have to worry about fermenting it too dry. Might bypass some of the issues I've read about some people's yeasts not converting the fermentables completely and ending with higher than desired FG's.
 
Just read through all 43 pages. Might give this a shot when I have a free fermenter.
 
You should. It is a fun twist on mead I think. And it is about all I do lack the few melomels I put together. Also I have noticed with orange blossom honey you get a surprising amount of citrous character to show through. Even if you cook the honey really dark. Makes a really cool mead. Just bottled a 5 gallon batch of that. My prior 1 gallon batch of it had people trying to guess the flavor and they asked if I added apples, oranges, lemons. But nope! Just burnt honey, 71b yeast and proper nutrients.
 
Getting 5 kilos of honey that had just a little too much water content. It had started to ferment naturally but had been put into cold storage to stop it. Gonna do a bochet with it and have just read the whole thread. Some good info here. Here's to hoping I'll get the water content out quick enough and carmelization to happen so I don't have to stand there stiring it for all day haha. But I'm very excited to try this! Gonna just wing it. And if I have extra, I'll do a bochet cyser, a straight bochet, and a regular cyser and regular semi sweet mead with my other honey I have, well brewing a dunkelweisen on Sunday.... Busy day indeed! All well studying to take my bjcp tasting exam next weekend. Cheers!
 
I've made 3 versions of the same Bochet with varying results and the last one is the best alcohol I've ever made. First though I recommend cooking the honey indoors with no open access to the outside world because you will attract a lot of bees while boiling honey.

Batch 1: Boiled for around an hour, smell was toast and smokey. Boiled Honey Taste was Chocolate, Cherries and Toast. The mead itself tastes terrible for a while in Secondary but smooths out and turns delicious during finally clearing/aging.

Batch 2: I boiled it for less time so overall it was lighter color. Smelled like toasty honey. Boiled Honey Taste like Cherries and Toast. Final product was good but not as good as Batch 1.

Batch 3: about an hour boil, same taste and smell as Batch 1. This time though I dropped a Medium Toasted American Oak stick in for about a month. The final product was well rounded and tasted unique and amazing.

The boiling removes all original smells the honey once had so I wouldn't blow a bunch of money on anything fancy but still buy something quality.
 
So when you do this do you bring it to a boil and then maintain it for an hour? I want to try this but don't want to burn my house down.
 
NyQuil said:
So when you do this do you bring it to a boil and then maintain it for an hour? I want to try this but don't want to burn my house down.
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Yes, you keep it boiling for the entire time. Fair warning though, it boils over extremely easily and quadruples in volume. Stirring helps as well as air flow over the top of the pot (blowing on the foam gently will get it to calm down). And don't worry about clean up, all the honey cleans off with some hot water and soap after you finish.

You will want it to rapidly cool because that sucker will continue to cook for hours after you take it off the heat. In order to do this safely you need to have several Cups of water at the ready. Once you have finished cooking and removed it from the heat you will pour one cup of hot water (not boiling but hot) in to your cooked honey and slam a lid on it as quickly as possible because the temperature difference will create an almost explosive reaction! After it calms down dump another cup of hot water and close the lid. After this add a few cups of cold water until it stops reacting. Then continue your regular Mead Making routines once it reaches room temp. I personally recommend tasting a bit of the honey after it cools to see just how different it now tastes!
 
Dr_Floyd said:
Yes, you keep it boiling for the entire time. Fair warning though, it boils over extremely easily and quadruples in volume. Stirring helps as well as air flow over the top of the pot (blowing on the foam gently will get it to calm down). And don't worry about clean up, all the honey cleans off with some hot water and soap after you finish.
Click to expand...

Listen to this and go REALLY slow on the boil. It will start boiling fast, get very foamy, and will boil over if you are not careful. Start with the heat low and only turn it up slowly. It is going to take a long time, don't try to rush it by turning the heat too high.
 
We didnt experiens problems besides the foam then boiling and we had alot of room in the kettle.

We lett the honey cool for 10 min before adding 1 liter of boiling hot water. Then we stird it in and lett it cool for a while before adding more cold water.

Will get back with tasting notes later this weekend.

View attachment 1458798693962.jpg
 
JunkCatsOnThePorch said:
Whoa! This sounds like a nightmare! Anyone with some true stories?
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Nothing too bad.....i made mine outside but lived in Roswell New Mexico at the time and thought "This is a desert, there's no bees around here."
I was so very,very wrong.
A few splatters of the stuff leaped out of the brewpot and onto the concrete in the side yard. I thought "Great. That's going to be a big arsepain to clean." Then every bee in a 5 mile radius showed up. Going from my vuage memory i want to say it was 50-100 or so bees that showed up and swarmed the ground of the hot gooey honey.Being allergic to them i went inside. (the brew kettle had allready been moved inside by this point) After an hour or so the bees had completely removed any honey from the ground so i guess it wasnt so hard to clean it off the concrete after all. Did not get stung once luckily. However now being in Arkansas and knowing that there are bee farmers within 15ish miles of me...I`ll not be doing this outside again.
 
JunkCatsOnThePorch said:
Whoa! This sounds like a nightmare! Anyone with some true stories?
Click to expand...

I live in a city, surrounded by the concrete. And I had a window just slighty open plus I had a ventilation hood to suck whatever is boiling...
I got like twenty bees in the house after just a couple of minutes...
 
Only made bochet once - Just bottled it the other day and I cooked my honey in the oven at 350 F inside the crock pot of a slow cooker. Cooked the honey for two hours and had no problems with boil over and had complete control over the temperature. Aim to make another batch cooked for 3 or 4 hours to see the difference that the time cooking makes to the flavor.
 
JunkCatsOnThePorch said:
Whoa! This sounds like a nightmare! Anyone with some true stories?
Click to expand...


Just think about this. That splattering that can happen with the honey, if it lands on you skin... It's basically like hot tar landing on you. Boiling hot, thick and sticky, stuck to your skin. Wear protective gear.
 

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