I had some really fantastic news happen this week, and decided to celebrate with trying a recipe I'd been told about, but was always too terrified to try. With things going so well, I figured "Why the heck not?!" and forged on ahead. Just like what's going on in life, I was very apprehensive, excited, terrified, and filled with a sense of "What am I DOING?!". And just like life, I think I've made the right decision.
I'm attempting to make a vanilla chai spiced bouchet. I first heard of a bouchet when I had emailed the wonderful person behind the Game of Thrones food blog (naturally named after the Inn at the Crossroads) to send my Season 4 premier dinner. I off handedly mentioned that I was sad my spiced apple cyser wasn't ready, but mainly wanted to go "OMG look at what I made thanks to you, you are so awesome!" So I was completely FLOORED that she replied wanting to know more about this cyser of mine. We chatted a bit via email, and she suggested I try to make a bouchet next. Considering it came so highly recommended from someone I was geek-squeeing over corresponding with, naturally I *had* to do it sometime.
A bouchet is a "burnt-honey mead", and most people find it with a very very *very* old recipe that's hard to parse into modern speak. It essentially is boiling honey until it's caramelized (but not an actual caramel. No butter or cream is added.) and then adding water or juice to dilute it to your desired specific gravity and volume. Then proceed with wine making as usual. The boiling and caramelizing of the honey darkens it a LOT and also gives everything tastes of toffee, marshmallow, and caramel. All things I really *really* wanted to make into a mead. Being that you're pretty much making molten sugar, I was more than a bit terrified about burning myself, ruining pots, and the like. So I did a *lot* of internet research.
My geek-squee-causing correspondent also runs a medieval brewing blog called Game of Brews, and had posted about the bouchet, as well as the original recipe she followed. (http://www.gameofbrews.com/brewing-bouchet-burnt-honey-mead-1393/). The 1393 recipe is:
“BOUCHET. To make six sesters 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.” -Le Menagier de Paris, France, 1393
Thankfully, I didn't need to translate all that to modern speak. The great part is that it's a pretty good description of what to look for as you're boiling the honey. Plus, there were pictures on the Game of Brews site. I do love pictures of what to expect.
I didn't want to make this exact recipe, though. I wanted something quite a bit stronger, so the beer yeast was right out, and I wanted a good strong 14% ABV or higher mead like my cyser. So to the internet I went! I found a ton of great posts and recipes (that I totally did not bookmark so I have no way to link back to them) that gave me the basic ratio of 3lbs honey per gallon. So to the farmer's market I went to get 9lbs of honey! Since this was going to be an experimental batch, and the honey was going to be caramelized to give more tones of toffee, marshmallow, and caramel, I wasn't picky on the type of honey. Local wildflower honey was the cheapest, so I went with that:
See how gorgeously empty that is? I am a bloody genius, I tell you. I was thinking the night before how to get all the honey out without having to hold it there, or rinse it out with water because I wanted JUST honey. I came up with the idea of rubber bands and kitchen utensils. And it worked like a charm.
I'm bloody brilliant I tell you.
After all 9lbs went in... we watched some anime.
After we watched some anime, then it was time to hopefully not cause 3rd degree burns. Turning on the stove and starting to stir. I had been warned that honey expands A LOT when heated, so I used Boyfriend's beer brewpot which holds 5 gallons. 9lbs of honey didn't even come up to a gallon, so I figured I was good.
It looks dark, but it's not. It's just a LOT of honey.
It took a while to get it going, but it was weird feeling how the honey got easier and easier to stir as time went on. It makes sense chemically, but it was still weird to feel . Eventually, it started to get opaque, and oddly, lighten up.
Seriously got to a very light butterscotch color. Note that it took 15 minutes to just get it to THAT stage. And that was when the fun started. It started boiling, foaming and EXPANDING!
You can see it starting to darken as well as how much it expanded. I was pretty much stirring non-stop at this point. And it took all of one minute to go from gorgeous butterscotch to "OMG BOIL". And then 5 minutes to get darker and start puffing up. I'll admit, I burned myself a few time. Molten honey is HOT! This project is currently the one that's been the most personally painful. However, my house now smells like toffee and marshmallows, so I guess it's a trade off.
Eventually, the color darkened and I felt it was time to stop. It was kinda scary looking then.
25 minutes of constant stirring and burning fingers. If I stopped stirring for more than a few seconds, it would puff up to over the 4 gallon line as you can see on the pot. It got BIG.
I tried to take samples out to show the progression of the color, but my plate got messy. Starting at the 6 o'clock position, go clockwise (mostly). There's one splat at the top that's of the finished product. But you can see how it does get darker.
The final color was a bit darker as it kept cooking while I was trying to add the water to cool it down and dilute. That was......... fun. I had to have the lid on and slowly funnel water down the side and then take the funnel out and hold the lid on while the whole pot shook explosively. Once again, thank you to all the internet research for warning me that water + hot honey = explosions.
Once I was able to pour water and have it NOT explode, I poured enough to make sure it was all dissolved in the water and no hard candy bits wold be forming if I walked away. The cold water also cooled things off to be pourable. There were SOME bits on the bottom, but I added some water and heated things up to dissolve most of them.
When I dissolved what I could, and added it to the bucket, the volume was a bit over 2 gallons. So I added cold water until just a bit over 3, and hoped my starting specific gravity wouldn't be too low. I was worried because I used 9lbs of honey and 2 1/2 gallons of apple juice for the cyser, and that ended at about 16.5% ABV. I wanted something like that, but apple juice has a LOT of sugar in it as well, which I wouldn't be getting by just adding the water. Luckily, I didn't have to worry too much.
1.102. I would have liked higher, but that will give me about 13.5% or so after all is said and done and dilutions from racking etc. Not quite the 15% I wanted but still a good hearty mead.
My one issue so far is the yeast I was planning to use I've had for a bit too long and the use by date was last month. They've also been in the fridge for the last year or so, so I'm not sure if they'll work. At worst, they don't, and I run by one of the beer and wine stores and get another sachet of them tomorrow or Monday.
I'm also going against my usual grain and NOT fermenting with the spices I want to use. I'll add them later in the secondary while the mead is clearing, and not while it's actively fermenting. I really don't have any idea as to how much I want to add, but my thoughts are:
1 vanilla bean, split with the seeds scraped out and in to the mead as well.
3-4 sticks cinnamon
1oz cloves
3-4 whole nutmeg
2oz cardamom
1oz white peppercorn
3-4 anise star
3 inches peeled and sliced fresh ginger
I'll add those when things go in to the secondary and taste after a month. I feel that is a small enough amount of spice that I can increase if needed, and I won't over spice initially. I hope.
So far, the yeast aren't doing anything, so I have a feeling I'm going to be heading to one of my local brew stores tomorrow to get another packet. Ah well!
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