What happens when you prepare the exact same bochet recipe using the same honey, yeast, nutrient additions, and fermentation schedule, but play some chemistry games with the caramelization of the honey? You get a mead flavoured with Maillard instead of caramel products!

This was a fun experiment, and I may have created a new style of mead at the end of it all. If you want to replicate this recipe:

Ingredients:
1.25 kg honey*
1.2 g of Lavin K1V-1116 yeast
3.6 g of yeast nutrient (White Labs W1000 nutrient)

Brewing process:
1) Caramelize or maillard react the honey (see below)
2) Dissolve honey in enough water for a final volume of 4 L
3) Add yeast nutrient and rehydrated yeast
4) Ferment at 18.5C for 4 weeks
5) Cold crash and transfer to a clean fermenter
6) Age on a dozen charred medium-toast American oak cubes, 1 week
7) Transfer a second time
8) Stabilize with 0.9 g potassium sorbate and 0.23 g potassium metabisulfate
9) Bottle

Caramelizing the honey (traditional bochet):
1) Put the honey into a pot that is at least 4 times the volume of the honey
2) Heat over medium heat until the honey boils. Hold at 125-135C until the desired colour is reached.
3) Add water to cool

Maillard honey:
1) Prepare 1 M lye solution (1 g of food grade sodium hydroxide into 25 ml water). WARNING: this is highly caustic - take care!
2) Heat honey as above, once the honey reaches 115C add 1 tbsp (15 ml) of the lye per kilogram honey
3) Hold at 125-135C until the desired colour is reached.
4) Add water to cool

My original blog post on the Bourbon Bochet recipe & tasting notes can be found at: [ Ссылка ]

Additional details on the Maillard bochet can be found at: [ Ссылка ]

Theme Song: "RetroFuture Nasty"
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
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