Same procedure. Washing bottles.

This “Double Blast” bottle cleaner is worth its weight in gold. Also the “Fast Rack” frame in the back fits perfectly for my choice of bottles. The bottles were also sprayed with Star San and then rinsed again.

Alle the gear was lined up

All clean and ready

The bottles were filled with my trusted siphon. Unfortunately I did not get a picture.

Placing the black heat shrink capsules on top of each 0.5L bottle. This is also a presentable way of hiding the silver colored screw cap :o)

Shrink the capsules in slow boiling water. A quick dip in the water is enough to get the tight seal. Just remember to use a glove to protect the hand, and a tool to hold the capsule in place. I am very fond of my bent knife – works very well.

The bottles were cleaned to get rid of spots and finger prints. Then the bottles were labeled. Using my primitive set-up to put the label in the same position, just adds a more appealing look to the bottle.

and voila!

I prepared the clean fermenter by pouring boiling water into it, and over the tubing going to the pump. I figured I would used the bottom part of my old racking cane to have a controlled distance to the bottom of the fermenter.

Then I attached the hoses to the pump and pumped the hot water out of the fermenter. I still needed to draw the water to the pump because it is not able to pull air. Finally, I just shook of the water out of the tubes and I was ready.

– Turn on the pump,
– Dip the tip of the racking cane into the Botchet,
– Suck the liquid to the pump
– Put the exit tube into the new fermenter
– and then just focus on the keeping the racking cane below the surface of the mead.

I set the power supply to 7.5V. Judging from the litre scale of the new fermenter, it took about 25s to move 1L which is about 2.3 to 2.4 L/min, which was just perfect.

Not much sediment was present in the bottom of the fermenter, so I will now leave it for maturing now. Next step will be bottling.

Cleaning the pump was done by pulling about a litre of boiling water through it, after removing the racking cane tip. Finally is pulled a bit of demineralised water through the pump and tubes because the water here is quite hard.

Was it easier? First of all I did not have to lift the full fermenter to a table and risk disturbing the sediment. For larger volumes it will hardly be a option to even move the fermenter. Hereafter, I think the work load was pretty much the same. One more advantage was that when I pull a bit of air into the racking cane, the flow did not stop, but the pump just pushed the bubbles through. My old racking cane would have stopped flowing right away. I also like that I can clean the pump with boiling water. My old racking cane cannot be cleaned in boiling water and need to be washed with detergents. All in all, I am very pleased with my new “toy”.

Oe: 24-25 degrees :o) just perfect

The only issues was that I changed between and old and a new fermenter of different brands. I think the volume scales on the side are a bit different because I get bigger fluctuations from the calculated values when changing between fermenters of different brand than when I am changing between 2 of the same brand. Still +-1 degree Oechsle is within acceptable uncertainties.

As mentioned in my last post about my bochet I measured Oe to 16 degrees. I would like to back sweeten it to 25 degrees, and using my Honey-Oechsle equations for addition of honey I can calculate that I need to add 542 g of honey. (see HERE). Using 550 g as target I still ended up adding 558 g to a kitchen bowl – well within the uncertainty of the calculation with is +- 30 g. I use my late summer honey for sweetening since I am out of spring and summer honey. Amazing how fast you can use 50 kg of honey :o)

The honey was stirred gently with about 800 ml of the bochet mead to slowly dissolve the honey. The kitchen bowl was emptied into the new fermenter and a second portion of about 800 ml was added to the bowl to rinse out the rest of the honey. This portion was also poured into the fermenter, which was then closed and the air lock attached.

I will wait until tomorrow to to check the gravity just to let the honey dissolve fully.

The taste is quite interesting. You can taste the berries but not so much the burned honey, except in the aftertaste. It does have some acidity due to the berries but it is not bad – just not really smooth. But this one thing long term storage will do for you :o)

The fermentation appeared to have completely stopped, and the mead was clearing, but after removing the berries the fermenter started to pressurize and the airlock began to bubble (?). I think disturbing the mead it started to degas rather than restarting to ferment.

Measurements are as follows
Oe: 16
pH: 3.64 (could very well be over-saturated with CO2)

The Oechsle value is a bit low and I would like to back sweeten the mead to 20-25 degrees. pH is low but still OK. I think it will go up a bit if the fermenter is degassing, and then it should be perfect.

Basically I just put the frozen berries into a clean fermenter, added about 3 L of the bochet must and left it for a while to thaw while occasionally stirring and hacking with a spatula :o)

Once the berries were reasonably thawed I mashed them like you would with mash potato to increase the surface area a bit for exaction. Then I just transferred the rest of the bochet to the new fermenter leaving behind as much yeast and unwanted “chunks” as possible.

Actually, the thick layer of foam had almost completely been fermented and only a little residue was floating on the surface.

I measured the temperature shortly after I closed the new fermenter to about 14-15 C. Since the extraction had just started it did not make sense to measure Oe. next day the fermentation was running again and Oe was about 20 degree. The total volume was reduced by approximately 1.5 L but the berries corresponded to about the same volume, so no significant change – not until I remove the berries at least :o) This would means the the must had been diluted about 8%. If ABV was about 14%, then it was now about 13% and the yeast now have a little more work to do.

Here we go….

For 20L Bochet:
7.4 kg honey (water content 15%)
Biggest pot I have (15 L)

I had put aside 7.4 kg of spring honey from this year for the purpose. Of this 7.25 kg (~5 L) was poured into my biggest pot which holds 15 L. I had read that the honey would expand a lot and that I needed a pot which were 4 times the volume of the honey. I figure 3 times would be enough. As it turned out this was a super critical bit of information!!!!

I had also read several statements about the temperature of the burnt honey, some extremely high. To shed some light on this I bought a thermometer which could measure up to 250C. I prepared a holder for the temperature probe which I made out of a cheap wire hanger (see pic below). And I was ready to go.

As the temperature was rising the first I noticed was a dramatic drop in viscosity shortly after I reached 40C. Also, the honey became very unclear.

At about 110C the honey started to foam. This was expected since the boiling temperature of water is 100C and the honey contains about 15% of water. When the temperature hit 115C, the mead started to foam like crazy, and the foam level kept rising almost to the top of the pot. Fortunately it did not overflow – It would have taken forever to clean the kitchen. I turned down the heat to slow down the foaming, still keeping the temperature at 115C.

Since water is evaporating the temperature will not change if the heat is turned up. Instead more water will evaporate at the same time and the foam would have increased. As the water evaporates the honey will heat up slowly but it will never reach excessive temperatures as long as the sugar is mixed with water.

Now here is the interesting thing. Shortly after the foaming started the honey also started to brown. This means than the honey is not being burnt but is actually boiled.

The temperature slowly went up to 125C (give and take 5C) and never got above 130C throughout the heating. During the entire boiling time I was stirring the pot to ensure that the honey did not stick to the bottom at any time – then 1½ hour is a looong time

From homebrewtalk (HERE) I found this great picture that is worth showing again. It is a picture by Sharkman20 (credit where credit is due).

With reference to familiar terms from the roasting of malt, I figured I will use the following definitions

30-60 min: Mild-mel

75-90 min: Cara-mel

105-up: Choco-mel

:o)

I am actually not all that fond of a strong burnt taste, so I decided to stop when I reached a cara-mel. Using the same set-up, I followed my progress. 

Times from the top left the time was: 45min, 60min, 70min, 85min, and just before cooling 90min

The smell and taste of caramel was really strong with a light bitter aftertaste. I think this mead will taste like nothing I ever tasted before.

For cooling I filled my kitchen sink with cold water and slowly lowered the pot into the water. Then I poured cold water into the honey bit by bit until I could no longer hear the hissing of evaporating water. The pot was then removed from the sink because the honey started to clod on the sides, but with a bit of stirring the cloding melted again. Then I just added cold water to about 10 L, checked the temperature (about 60C) and poured the content into a sanitized fermenter. I rinsed the pot twice with cold water which was then also added to the fermenter. Finally I filled the fermenter to somewhere above the 19 L mark, put the lid on and left it to cool down. And best of all. No burnt black honey and a pot that was very easy to clean.

So in conclusion: With a pot large enough to hold 3-4 times the volume of honey and with good temperature control of the stove, it is not difficult to “burn” honey for a bochet mead in a controlled manner.