{"id":2178,"date":"2020-01-19T19:46:25","date_gmt":"2020-01-19T19:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/suigenerisbrewing.com\/?p=2178"},"modified":"2020-01-19T19:46:33","modified_gmt":"2020-01-19T19:46:33","slug":"bourbon-bochet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/suigenerisbrewing.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/19\/bourbon-bochet\/","title":{"rendered":"Bourbon Bochet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

While I blog exclusively about fermented beverages (and to a lesser extent, foods), another thing I enjoy is whisk(e)y – especially scotch and bourbon<\/a>. I’ve also been a long-time brewer of mead, and am a newly minted beekeeper.<\/a> A style of mead that has always intrigued me is bochet – a mead made of caramelized honey. But given the cost of buying honey I never went down that road. But I had a bumper-crop of honey this year, so I thought I’d give it a go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted my first bochet to be a “pure” bochet – i.e. without too much flavouring aside from the honey and yeast. While reading recipes I found a number of people making a bourbon-inspired bochet, usually by ageing the finished bochet on oak and vanilla. I decided to go that route, but rather than using vanilla, I decided on a process similar to that used to make bourbon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second consideration was how dark to caramelize the honey. Darker should give more of the caramel notes present in bourbon, but also carries the risk of becoming astringent. This is my first bochet, so I decided to try the middle ground – dark, but not black. I also needed to choose a method<\/a>; you can caramelize your honey in a pot over a stove, in a slow-cooker, or in a pressure cooker. The later two methods reputably give a smoother mead, but the former gives a stronger caramel\/roasted marshmallow character. I decided to go with the later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Recipe<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The recipe for this mead is very simple. For 4L (~1.2 US gallons):<\/p>\n\n\n\n