Feb 2012 Bochet

I was taking a look at the old blog and found that this post never got published back in 2012... and now near 8 years later here it is...

Whelp, I've been lazy and haven't been posting here of late... It's not that I haven't been doing much, I swear....

Over on the home brew talk forums a bunch of the posters have been talking about this new beast of a mead, the Medieval burnt mead called Bochet.

That's right, burnt, it's where you take the honey and boil it lightly until it turns a deep black color and the boiling bubbles release puffs of smoke that smell like marshmallows.Though it seems that many don't take it that far and, depending on tastes, opt to cook the honey from a light or heavy caramel.

Now before anyone runs out to try this, boiling honey can quickly expand many times it's original size and has been described as "burning napalm of burning and misery" (or something like that). It also, if done outside, attracts all sorts of bees and wasps and will spit and splash all over the place if it is not diluted with water carefully (as water placed into a boiling substance will start immediately boiling itself).

So having a pot that's 4-5 times larger then the amount of honey your are boiling, a watchful eye, a long handled spoon, and a bee deterrent device are all things that come in handy.

For a gallon test batch I used:
4lbs honey
11 quart pot
71-B rehydrated with goferm
DAP and Fermaid K
Cooking time: 45 minutes
SG 1.080

I think that I cooked the honey too high, some of the estimations for time that I read on the forums was something like 2 hours and this only took 30-45 minutes at most. It's also possible that I carbonized a little of it as well.

The SG of 1.080 seem low as the amount of honey used should have had an SG of around 1.120. Thinking back I may have forgotten to shake and mix it after topping up with water... But I would like to think that I learned from the mistake that I made with the habanero mead, but who knows. I seem to remember thinking that the SG was low because I cooked it for too long.

I have no idea what it tastes like as that it's still in primary and I've been dragging my butt on racking it. Though it looks clear? at the very least like all the yeast has dropped out of it. So I may just bottle it from primary and hope that no lees drop in the bottles.

06.21.11 Orange Metheglin

This mead was another attempt at the JOAM. Only instead of being tossed together with quick ingredients like the JOAM I used the following recipe that called for more effort and better results.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/malkores-not-so-ancient-orange-mead-50201/

I scaled the recipe down to one gallon and used the below:

½ of an orange juiced
little more then 1tsp zest grated off of orange
1 stick cinnamon
1 clove
4lbs honey (1.814kg ~ used 1.826kg)
½ tsp dap with wort and one day after start
½ tsp Fermaid K with wort and one day after start
Re hydrated Lalvin 71b with Go Ferm

I heated 2 liters of water to just before boiling, added  the zest, juice, cinnamon, and clove – left for 20 mins... This should have been less time but I underestimated the time it would take to clean out the jug. I strained the stepped mixture through some cheese cloth and then added another liter of cold water in order to cool it down before I added the honey.

I tried just adding the honey to the jug through the funnel but it was taking too long. And in order to speed things up I added the rest of the honey to another liter of warm water to dissolve and then add. See what I did here? 4 liters of water and 4lbs of honey has a volume greater then 4.5 liters... As it was I had some must left over that I couldn't fit into the jug... 

But at least I remembered to shake it this time!

My target OG was 1.120 and with the little bit wasted I ended up at 1.116, which makes me happy that I didn't end up too far off. The 71b yeast has a tolerance of 14% so this should finish around 1.007 and be a dry-semi sweet. Which is what I was going for as that the JOAM ended at about 1.008 if I recall correctly.

As it stands I no longer have anything else to blog about after this. The better part of my jugs are filled with mead fermenting away and the ones that are empty I'll need to use when racking. Though I'm thinking about picking up some more jugs and making a couple of different kinds of cider that I want to try. Once I get the jugs and have the recipes nailed down I'll toss up a post.

05.29.11 Habanero Capsicumel

 After my first attempt at a capsicumel failed at obtaining any heat from the jalapeno. I decided to go all out with this time and used a habanero including the seeds and the pith for maximum heat potential.

Will it work? I hope so, it should end up rather sweet and with a good kick. I tasted some that overflowed when I was adding nutrients and after only a day with the habanero I could feel it already. Six months on the pepper should be absolutely wonderful/hell depending on your heat tolerance.

 I ended up using a similar recipe from the home brew forums that inspired the jalapeno capsicumel.

5lbs Honey
Water to 1 gallon
1 habanero with seeds and pith
½ tsp Fermaid K and ½ tsp DAP day after pitch
½ tsp Fermaid K and ½ tsp DAP two days after pitch
Lalvin 71B yeast rehydrated with GoFerm

And in true me fashion I made a mistake with this batch as well. I topped the mixture of water and honey with fresh water, Took a gravity reading, added the habanero, and then pitched the yeast. It wasn't until I looked at the gravity reading and the way that the yeast didn't drop down to the bottom right away that I realized I didn't shake the bloody thing. >.< And so there was a layer of thicker honey and water sitting at the bottom of the jug.

I used the mead calculator over at the Got Mead site and it gave me a suggested SG of 1.150 for 5lbs of honey in a one gallon batch. The yeast is good up to 14% and should give FG around 1.044. With such a high FG it would be considered a desert mead, but if that heat sticks around it'll be quite the quaff. I'm thinking that this will need to be served in shot glasses or something to limit intake.

05.24.11 Home Brewed Ginger Beer Take 3

Ok, so this is the 3rd attempt at the ginger beer, see the first and second attempts for more information. I've learned something new with this batch, and that is write down the directions and don't try to follow the ones in your head. Since this was the 3rd time I tried to have a go at it just using my memories...  Which caused me to forget the correct number of teaspoons needed to feed it each day, I used 4 instead of the 6 the recipe calls for. It ended up not being too big of a deal, I had pre-measured everything out and was just spooning the ginger/sugar mix into the plant. As it was I just poured in what was left and waited another day before bottling.

This time I had made sure to strain the plant properly and even left some of the liquid behind in order to avoid getting any yeast into the bottles. I noticed as I was mixing the liquid into the water and sugar I that some yeast still made it through past the cheese cloth... It didn't seem to cause any problems with the carbing and they are now sitting in the fridge after two weeks. Next time I'm thinking that I'll try to double filter to try and limit the amount of yeast at the bottom of the bottles.

The batch tastes much the same as the first one, fairly sweet with a nice ginger taste without any sort of bite like commercial ginger beer has. Which if that is what you are going for it's nice and refreshing, I on the other hand would like for it to have just a little bit of a bite. I've read that some people have added habenero or bird's eye peppers to try and accomplish this. Next time I'm either going to try adding a pepper or maybe use real ginger instead of the powder (or just more powder >.>).

06.13.11 Cider tasting

I brought the remaining cider I had to a friend's place for a party at the beginning of the month and got a some feedback on them.

Concentrate Cider

Out of the two ciders there was less of this cider left at the end of the night. I'm not sure if it was just because people were turned off by a dry cider or because they wanted to try something different. (It has been explained to me that most commercial ciders in the area are pretty dry.)

It was described as having more taste then the Turbinado cider, which would make sense considering the can of concentrate that was used to back sweeten and carb it. When I had some it still seemed to be a little bit sour to me. And I believe that if I could reduce the sourness a little it would make for a more refreshing drink and something you could have more then one or two of at a time.

Turbinado Cider

This one had a muted apple taste to is and since it was lacking the concentrate turned out to be smoother. Although the dryness gave it an edge of its own. And from what I remember it seemed to be a little more winey then the other, I've heard that this has something to do with boosting the ABV with the turbinado sugar.

That's all I can remember about this one, not many people tried it so I wasn't able to get many opinions other then it was better then the concentrate cider. I'm thinking that it might be worth trying to either back sweeten it a lot with turbinado sugar or try priming with a little bit of concentrate.

Over all I think that both of these need more work. I want to either let them sit longer before bottling, or try a different yeast strain. From what I understand people have had some good results using ale yeasts. If I can find an easy source of them in town I'll give them a go next time instead of the wine yeast.

04.02.2011 Turbinado Cider

When I made the second attempt at the Concentrate cider I also tried making a dryer apfelwien like cider. The recipe was the same as the apfelwien, only instead of racking it and letting it age I gave it three weeks and then primed and bottled it. I tried to guesstimate the right about of sugar to prime it with from looking at beer recipes and came up with 35g. Looking at the finished results it carbed up nicely in about three weeks and maybe could have used just a little bit more. The carb was fine, but when compared to the Concentrate cider it seemed a little lackluster, though the concentrate cider was probably over carbed. When I make this again I'm thinking that I might try it with 40-45g of sugar to see if I can't find the upper limit.

Recipe:

4 cans Allen's apple juice

200g turbinado sugar

Lalvin 71b yeast

(On a side note, it might be worth while to dissolve the sugar in some warm water. Otherwise the foam from shaking takes too long to settle and causes problems when pitching the yeast. Though with saying that it is always possible to pitch the yeast on top of the foam and just shake it again to mix... )

Primary for 3 weeks and then prime with 35g turbinado sugar and bottle condition for 3 weeks.

SG: 1.056

FG: 1.000

ABV: 7.3%

When asking which one people preferred between the concentrate and the turbinado ciders it was always the concentrate one. They said that it had more apple taste where as the turbinado cider was a little bland. Which makes sense because of the concentrate that is used to prime the concentrate cider with. I'm not sure how I can increase the apple flavor of the turbinado cider. I have two idea right now; One is to back sweeten until it reaches the level of the concentrate cider, and the other is to try adding some spices to the primary (like cinnamon or cloves). Of course, I could just try both and see how they turn out.

04.02.2011 Concentrate Cider again

Back in April I started a second batch of the Concentrate Cider that I made in Feburary. This time I decided to not rush it and waited and additional week before bottling it. I figured that the extra week would allow more time for the yeast to fall out as well as clean up after itself. Once bottled I left them for 13 days (compared to 3 last time) before tossing them into the fridge. The caps had started to raise a little and looking back at the ginger beer it meant that they needed to go into the fridge right otherwise they could have become bottle bombs.

In addition to letting the cider sit in primary longer I also used a different yeast, Lalvin 71B. I had heard that it was good at malic fermentation and hoped that it would help with the sour taste that the last one had. It's still to early to tell as that I only had a little bit, I cracked a couple and shared them with some friends and they seemed to like it. It still seemed a little sour to me, but not as much as the first few from the last batch. With any luck when I crack the next one it will have mellowed out some more. Also it was mega carbed, the first sip that I had was all carb and bubbles. Which is a neat experience considering that cider doesn't really have any sort of head retention. I probably left them out too long to carb, but as long as they don't explode I don't mind. I'm holding onto them until the start of June when I'll be getting some friends to help me finish them.

Something that I found interesting was that even with the extra week the cider only fermented down to a FG of 1.000. I'm guessing that the concentrate is providing some sugars that are harder for the yeast to eat and end up being left behind. I also took a gravity reading of the cider after priming, it came out to be around 1.010. I believe that this is at the upper end of the dry range and would be considered a semi-sweet cider. Which, depending on what you like, could be better then the dryer commercial ciders.