We're in the new meadery which is already a mess!
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 Joshua who wants to know the traditional bochet making process. A bochet is a mead made with a caramelized honey. The most common way to do it is to take your honey, put it on the stove and slowly heat it. As it caramelizes, it will double in volume. Honey expands when it's heated, so use a very big pot. The other traditional way is to be a home beekeeper and accidentally over-smoke your honey, burning or nearly spoiling it, making a mead out of it and telling people it's a bochet.
Sara is another in a long list of home meadmakers who wants a carbonated, semi-sweet mead and kind of wants to do it like a homemade soda, where she puts some yeast in and bottles it while it's still fermenting, and then tells everyone to just stick it in the fridge before the bottles explode. I cannot recommend this technique. A bottle bomb is called a bottle bomb for a reason. A bomb is nothing more than rapidly expanding gas trapped in an enclosed container until it goes off. So please, yes, it can work. But there are better ways to make a semi-sweet, carbonated beverage.
Vernon is making a higher-gravity mead that he expects to end at 14-16% ABV and he wants to know if I recommend more than one ounce of yeast nutrient per five-gallon batch. And the answer is one ounce per five gallons is already a lot and you may start tasting the nutrient. So, what I would do is I would experiment to see where you get a mead you like the flavor of.
Our last question this week comes from Deyach, who uses the juice of one lemon as a nutrient in his meads, and he's getting 14% ABV mead with no off flavors, and he's never heard of someone else doing this. Is he crazy? The answer is, I guess you are crazy for trying it. But if it works for you, keep doing it, man. That's the wonder of being a home meadmaker. You don't even need to know why it works. If it works, you nailed it. If you're making good mead, keep doing it until it stops making good mead. I don't know what else to tell you. Congratulations!
Anyway, that was our last question this week. Keep sending them. I'll get to them as soon as possible. Cheers.
