Now I don't know about you, but the thought of caramelized honey with nutty overtones serving as the base for a mead sets my mouth watering. This "bochet" style mead has a name that means "burnt" but if you ask me, the guy in the video takes that a little too literally. Cooking the honey until it's a deep golden brown seems more than enough without out all that nasty pine tar residue. I may well have to experiment with a little gallon batch before long. Here's the recipe featured in the video:
"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."
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I have successfully made a brochet using honey that was heated by the beekeeper to extract it from capping wax. The beekeeper used a double boiler to do the extraction. The mead was almost black in colour but had some wonderful madiera/muscat/tokay type flavours. The only fault that I could find with mead was the lack of any discernible nose. Unfortunately the beekeeper has now retired and no longer makes his Dark Honey!
ReplyDeleteI have experimented with local honeys and found that some darken quite quickly and others do not. Some for the same amount of time heating are "burnt" and others have caramelized beautifully. You will need to experiment with what honey you use.