Burnt Honey Mead (Bochet)

I just bottled my first attempt at mead this weekend so I've decided to try a second.  I'll be try out a Bochet which is a mead made out of honey that has been cooked until it has started to caramelize.  I've never had one before but it's reported to create some interesting caramelized flavors.

Mead making is very easy compared with beer making - they just take honey, water, yeast, and a lot of time to mellow.  The boiling necessary to make the caramelized honey makes things slightly more complicated.  The general process seems similar to making candi syrup where the temperature the mixture is allowed to get will determine the color and flavor of the mead.  I'm going to go with a relative low temperature for this first attempt - 142 F.  I'll cook it on a pretty low heat to not overshoot this.  May not get really bold flavors from this but I'll hopefully avoid burning anything.

I'm making 2 gal of this in the same pot I used last time.  I'll use Nottingham ale yeast which should dry things out pretty well.  Like my last mead, I'll give this a good 6 months or more to mature.

Recipe Details:

• 7.5 lbs of clover honey
• 1.75 gal of spring water
• 0.25 tsp Yeast Nutrient
• 1 package of Nottingham Ale Yeast

Results:

• OG:
• 1.108
• FG:
• 1.022
• Apparent Attenuation:
• 78%
• ABV:
• 12.63%

Process/Notes:

• 8/12/18 - Brewday:
• Poured the 7.5 lbs of honey into a large pot

• Rinsed out the remaining honey from the containers with some hot tap water
• Heated at medium low 
• The mixture came to a boil after a couple hrs
• The honey started to form some foam at the top.  I skimmed this off

• Stopped the boil when the mead got to 142 F
• Let it chill to the low 100s
• Hydrated the yeast in a cup of 90 F spring water
• Put 1.5 gal of spring water into the pot - mixed in the yeast nutrient
• Poured the warm honey into the pot
• Topped up the pot with water to get to about 2 gal
• Pitched the yeast
• Moved this to the basement utility sink in case there was any aggressive foaming
• 8/13/18 - Fermentation was well underway by the next day.  Only a light layer of foam on the top
• 8/14/18 - Fermentation still going.  Still pretty tame so I decided to move it off to a corner where it will age and be forgotten about for the next 6 months
• 11/23/19 - Bottled this Mead today.  Measured the gravity as 1.022.  Bottled it without any priming sugar for a still mead.  Ended up with about 2 gal which got me 22 bottles.  It is a little sweet and had a caramel and raisin flavor along with a slight bitterness.  It has an alcohol presence but is pretty smooth.

• 12/12/20 - Tasting Notes - Boldly flavor with a good amount of complexity.  Not easy to drink a lot of as it's quite sweet (half a bottle might be a good amount in one sitting) but enjoyable as a sipping drink on a cold.  I like the flavors quite a bit - fruit and caramel are very nice - and it's neat that they're all derived from just browning honey.