Dick heard of the idea of a "bochet", a mead from caramelized, darkened honey, from Dan Daugherty when pondering what we could do with the last of a 60 lb pail from a couple years earlier. It had darkened particularly from being kept liquid by keeping it on a heated mat that Becky had. It wasn't kept especially warm, perhaps just over 90, but it was kept that way for a long time. It wasn't as dark as some of the recipes for bochet that I had encountered in a search, yet it was definitely far darker than when we first got it. Becky named it while we were joking around: in the spirit of mead variations ending in -mel, it's a cara-mel. We'll see.
Ingredients:
Yeast notes. 8 g D47 yeast Brewmaster. Rehydrated and pitched at brew time.
February 5, 2022 - started a bochet. Gr 1.090. Potential abv 12% calculated from measured OG. However, we don't know what effect the darkening reactions might have on fermentability.
May 22, 2022 - Gr 1.023. May add some yeast nutrient.
May 24, 2022 - Added a small dose of nutrient.
August 22, 2022 - Gr 0.998.
August 23, 2022 - Rack carboy to carboy.
September 2, 2022 - Rack to keg.
September 17, 2022 - Bottled.
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