In which Ricky the Meadmaker answers questions about making mushroom mead, the best way to make a sweet mead, pasteurizing mead, the best equipment for home-meadmakers, and caramelizing honey for bochet.
Meadmaking Essential Equipment
Heat Pasteurization
Brewing with unusual ingredients
Mead Varieties Poster
GotMead.com Forum: Caramelizing Honey for a Bochet
I decided that in this episode, instead of answering questions, what I'm going to do is a scene for scene recreation of the Homestar Runner Decemberween special, The Steep Deep, but it turns out, I don't get to make those decisions.
Welcome to Ask the Meadmaker, where I, Ricky the Meadmaker, answer your questions about mead making, mead drinking, mead brewing, and really any question you're willing to send to me.
Our first question this week comes from Buzz Cook who wants to know if you can make a mushroom mead? And the answer is you can.
Our next question comes from Devlin who wants to know if you can pasteurize an entire carboy of mead to stop the fermentation. The answer is that theoretically, this is possible. But I cannot recommend trying to bring five gallons of liquid up to pasteurization temperatures at a stable volume-to-heat ratio because remember that liquid is going to be moving around inside. The chances that all of it will be the same temperature at the same time is really, really low. And you're probably asking for trouble.
Here's an easy one from Nick. If Ricky the Meadmaker, that's me, was going to put together a homebrew kit for mead making, what would be in it? The answer is a fermentation bucket with lid and airlock, and honey. The second part is why doesn't it have like a bottling wand or a racking cane in it or a carboy, the answer is you should spend most of your money on your $6,000 home kegging kit.
George wants to know about back-sweetening and if I stop my fermentation, sulfite, sorbate, and let it go sweet into the cans that way or if I go all the way dry, add sugar back in with sulfite and sorbate, or do I just cold crash? The answer is I don't make sweet meads, so I don't do any of those personally. But I never recommend just trusting cold crashing to keep your product from re-fermenting once it's packaged. I have known too many homebrew and commercial bottle bombs to recommend that.
Our last question this week comes from Jeff, and I don't know the answer, which is why I'm answering it on Ask the Meadmaker. What temperature should you get the honey to for a bochet? A bochet is a mead made with caramelized honey. He was thinking about trying to sous vide rather than boil, because honey can caramelize at lower temperatures and he knows that he could maintain his sous vide at 158-230˚F. I don't know if that would work. But I do know this. Honey doubles in volume as it approaches boiling, and I don't think that's something you'd want in a vacuum-sealed plastic bag, even in water, but I really don't know. So, if you've ever tried something like that using honey in a sous vide machine or on your stovetop for any reason, I'd love to hear about it so I can actually answer this question someday. So, shoot me an email, put a comment in the doobly doo.
Keep sending your questions. I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
