Bochet

Background
At Mead Magic, we advocate the non-boil method of brewing mead. When you heat up honey, some of the more delicate flavors and aromas disappear — features that give mead its fine taste. But there’s a different style of mead that demands you use caramelized honey. How could we resist?

Equipment needed

Special note about caramelizing honey

We used a pressure cooker to caramelize our honey. Shelley felt that this would be the safest way to go.

There are other methods to caramelize honey by boiling it over a stove until it reaches the proper temperature and flavor, so a pressure cooker is not strictly necessary if you want to try this recipe. If you chose a stove-boil method, use a big pan, and be vigilant as you cook your honey.

Directions

  1. Liquify your Mead Magic honey if necessary, and transfer it to your quart jar. If you need to top up the honey, you can (although it’s not necessary).
  2. Can your honey in the pressure canner at 5 pounds of pressure for 45 minutes. (Refer to your canning instructions if necessary.) This will caramelize the honey.
  3. Let your honey cool.
  4. Now refer back to the Mead Magic instructions and ferment, using the caramelized honey.
  5. Before you bottle the mead, be sure to taste it first. You may find that the mead is too dry for your taste. At this point, you can add honey to the mead. If you “backsweeten” like this, don’t bottle right away — let it age for another four weeks so that you know it’s done fermenting.

Notes from the brewer

We were very interested to try this mead after hearing so many glowing reports about how good a bochet tastes. After aging for about 6 months (mostly due to being busy!), we finally got to taste it. The first word that came to mind was “port” — the drink is dark, sweet, with overtones of toffee to it. 

I think this mead will only improve with age — definitely one recipe that I want to give some time to, but feel that it will be well worth the wait!