Thalassiomel - Sea Water Mead

[viking]

Has anyone tried brewing a batch of this? I started one yesterday evening. I burned the honey hoping for a honey roasted peanut flavor. The small sample that I had tasted like sea water with honey in it! Time will tell how this turns out. I'm curious to hear what others think of this. Oh, the recipe:

4 kg. Honey
½ T. Yeast Nutrient
½ T. Yeast Energizer
1 pkg. Lalvin 1118 yeast
300 g. (1 cup) Sea Salt (8.5 liters Sea Water (35 grams of salt per liter of water))

 

[erock2112]

sounds awful!

 

[maskednegator]

You will absolutely have to backsweeten this.

 

[homebrewer_99]

Thalassiomel...Greek for "the sea".

I am interested on how a Viking would utilize a Greek theme versus a Norse one?

I went climbing up to a glacier in BC many years ago...and I've been to Greece twice...

 

[viking]

I am not working with any themes, just mead. Thalassiomel is not a common type of mead that is made so I thought I would try it. I am also planning on making a capsicumel this fall. Most have been melomels, metheglyns, & just honey meads.

 

[ExoticMeadMaker]

any updates?

 

[truckjohn]

It's been my experience that Sea water makes a wonderful fungicide.....

It's also been my experience that sea water is absolutely, totally undrinkable - it will dehydrate you/make you very sick.... I can't imagine alcoholic sea water.... It sounds more like a marinate for meat than anything drinkable....

Any chance that the proper translation is really Mead to be drunk while at sea... or something pretty strong so it wouldn't spoil in hot/humid conditions - meant to be mixed with water to purify water of unknown quality that you would collect out from rain and rivers on long voyages.....

but... I could be wrong - keep us posted.

Thanks

 

[viking]

Update! The Thalassiomel is great for making Asian Marinated Mushrooms. It might be ok with a lot less salt! A lot less! If you enjoy sipping on soy sauce, this is your drink. I did find that is was barely drinkable if I mixed it 50/50 with Scotched mead. Next time I will just leave the salt out!

 

[Crock-and-Spoon]

I know this thread is three years old, but I came across a mention of thalassiomel today and was intrigued. Yours is the only recipe I have found for saltwater mead!

Viking, did you add the cup of salt to sea water, or did you add salt to fresh water to approximate sea water?

And have you found that the saltiness has mellowed over time, or did it remain too intense?

 

[Dragonbeard]

Viking, did you add the cup of salt to sea water, or did you add salt to fresh water to approximate sea water?

Considering he put 300g in 8.5l of water that calculates to 35g/l.
Don't think that's a coincidence.
Do let us know if you manage to adjust the recipe to create a salted alcoholic beverage that makes you gag after getting tipsy.

 

[ReDim]

I wonder if it will ferment in the first place You have a higher salinity then Sea, living things will not live in it, and yeast is a living thing.... You can try to ferment honey normally and after all sugars have fermented add sea salt.

Or you can take a bunch of fruits and pickle em with salt solution ( This sounds to salty for pickling...

anyway, this does not sound like something i would be looking forward to trying !

 

[SerifSansSerif]

Why not do a bochet (capitalize on the salted caramel sort of vibe), and add the sea salt towards the end to taste? (or brew with it.. IDC, but still, leave it on the sweet side..)

 

[Frognostic]

Is this something they used to make in the Ancient Greek or Roman civilizations?

 

[Crock-and-Spoon]

Ancient Greek.

I think what I will try is incorporate seaweed into the must for the primary fermentation, and use fresh filtered water instead of salted water. Time for some research!

 

[Frognostic]

That sounds interesting.

Reminds me of how some German beers are made with the addition of salt and also of the ancient Roman practice of blending wine with sea water.

 

[CKuhns]

Why not do a bochet (capitalize on the salted caramel sort of vibe), and add the sea salt towards the end to taste? (or brew with it.. IDC, but still, leave it on the sweet side..)

Reading this thread gave me a couple of thoughts. Salt may not be such a bad idea. Think about saltwater taffy.

Salt is considered and should be used as a flavor enhancer and if added in the correct proportions should not make what you are eating or in this case drinking taste salty but should rather bring forward or tease out the flavors.
Most folks can taste / recognize salt in solution at or near 180 ppm.

Sea water is roughly 3.5% salt mostly sodium but a lot of other stuff as well. Viking added what appears to be the equivalent to his mead. (Or maybe even more)

With enough water a human body can safely process 500 to 2500 ppm sodium at any given time. Beyond that you could have problems. Thus the reason we can not drink sea water. The recommended daily intake of salt is 2300 PPM over the course of a day.

A bochet if left sweet as SF suggests would taste like "caramely goodness".

A sweet caramel flavored Bochet with roughly 180 ppm salt dissolved in secondary just might be pretty darned good. It would likely bring out the caramel flavor and have a little salty flavor left over as well. As it is right near the threshold for most folks to pick it up as salty some folks may not pick up the salt others may and yet some others may find it too salty.

I am pretty sure we all have had sea salted caramel. (I know i have and do particularly like it.)

Rough estimate (if i did my 50 year old math correctly, someone correct me if i am mistaken) is to add about 3.5 grams salt (3/4 tsp) to a 20 Litre (~5 gallon) batch to get very near the 180 ppm target.

Anyone willing to give it a try?

Or even simpler...
Create a salt solution in water and add a drop or two to the next glass of sweet bochet you are drinking.

Now if i only had a bochet.... (Hmmmm, 18 pounds of honey and one empty 5 gallon carboy in the basement just waiting for someone to do something with it...) :smack:

 

[SerifSansSerif]

Reading this thread gave me a couple of thoughts. Salt may not be such a bad idea. Think about saltwater taffy.

Salt is considered and should be used as a flavor enhancer and if added in the correct proportions should not make what you are eating or in this case drinking taste salty but should rather bring forward or tease out the flavors.
Most folks can taste / recognize salt in solution at or near 180 ppm.

Sea water is roughly 3.5% salt mostly sodium but a lot of other stuff as well. Viking added what appears to be the equivalent to his mead. (Or maybe even more)

With enough water a human body can safely process 500 to 2500 ppm sodium at any given time. Beyond that you could have problems. Thus the reason we can not drink sea water. The recommended daily intake of salt is 2300 PPM over the course of a day.

A bochet if left sweet as SF suggests would taste like "caramely goodness".

A sweet caramel flavored Bochet with roughly 180 ppm salt dissolved in secondary just might be pretty darned good. It would likely bring out the caramel flavor and have a little salty flavor left over as well. As it is right near the threshold for most folks to pick it up as salty some folks may not pick up the salt others may and yet some others may find it too salty.

I am pretty sure we all have had sea salted caramel. (I know i have and do particularly like it.)

Rough estimate (if i did my 50 year old math correctly, someone correct me if i am mistaken) is to add about 3.5 grams salt (3/4 tsp) to a 20 Litre (~5 gallon) batch to get very near the 180 ppm target.

Anyone willing to give it a try?

Or even simpler...
Create a salt solution in water and add a drop or two to the next glass of sweet bochet you are drinking.

Now if i only had a bochet.... (Hmmmm, 18 pounds of honey and one empty 5 gallon carboy in the basement just waiting for someone to do something with it...) :smack:

Since you did all the work... I suggest you might try it.

Personally, working my way through finishing one brew (blackberry melomel, just dumped my K-meta and sorbate as well as some sparkolloid, and awaiting a time to sweeten it back up), starting another this fine new years eve, (sweet potato gruit), and have the next one after that lined up after, (revisiting the buckwheat braggot/bochet idea after rave reviews over a relatively "incomplete" test version).....

and then I have a request for some more blackberry melolmel (since what I have finishing was extremely popular upon sampling a week ago).

I also want to do the coconut bochet idea too soon, so maybe we can push the blackberry off a little bit more, and fit these two in.... somewhere... :S

 

[Frognostic]

A salmiakki-style mead could be interesting, with liquorice and ammonium chloride. Maybe some molasses could be added, maybe not.

I know I have tried salty liquorice and honey liquorice.

Combining honey, ammonium chloride and liquorice could make an enjoyable mead for those who like salty honey liquorice and mead.

The addition of aniseed, star anise or fennel seeds could also help liven it up a bit.

 

[Pyra]

Yuck. Thalassiomel sounds like a nasty drink.

 

[Crock-and-Spoon]

I have decided to model this experiment after a Gose, and after researching a few recipes online, I am going with:

1 gal recipe

2.5 g sea salt
7 g dulse
2 lbs wildflower honey (raw, local)
10 raisins
1 gal water

Simmered dulse in water for about 10 mins. Strained, dissolved salt. Warmed honey to pour more easily, dissolved in room temp. wort. Added raisins for nutrient. Am now covering to keep out debris and allow wild yeast to colonize.

I may experiment with adding sour oranges in the secondary for a salted citrus-ade profile.