Recipes

Anyone want to share what they've done? Recipes, reviews, footnotes and warnings?

Bochet - I've boiled my honey and water, which darkened the mix and gave a great caramelly smell, but it didn't come through in the end as much as hoped. I plan to attempt another bochet this fall, but I've read that great caution should be taken to prevent fire and honey napalm incidents when burning honey.

Mixed up two 1 gallon batches of mead last night. Picked wild blackberries a few times this summer, but one of the bushes might have been wild black raspberries. Froze fruit after each picking.

Wild Blackberry Melomel - Batch size: 2 gallons
OG: 1.09
FG: ?
Lalvin 1116
5 lbs clover honey
5.25 cups of blackberry juice divided 2:1 between two fermentation bottles.
1tsp pectic enzyme
1tsp yeast nutrient

4.9 pounds of blackberries were juiced, producing 5.25 cups of juice/sludge. The juice was thinned down with a half gallon of water, then heated to 160 degrees F for 15 minutes to pasteurize. It was poured through a medium strainer, then divided unevenly between the two fermentation bottles. Added honey and topped off with water to 1 gallon each. When bottles had cooled to warmer than room temperature, but not hot enough to make me get the thermometer again, I added nutrient and pectic enzyme, then aerated. Pitched yeast, popped on a bubblelock and tada.

After a month, SG was at .992, so a total of 2/3lb honey was added.

*There were several stops to check SG while adding honey to the bottle with more juice. The sugar content of the juice did not make a notable difference, thus the same honey in each bottle.

*Blackberry juice can stain porcelain!

10/21/10 Sampled each. The one with more juice was too tart, the one with less wasn't tart enough. Mixing back together before exiling them to the back of the closet.

The best beer ever:

Rooks Imperial Ale
3lb 2-row Pale Malt
3lb Honey Malt
2lb Wheat Malt
1lb Belgian Aromatic Malt (Munich can be substituted if this isn't available)
2oz Cascade Hops
1oz Magnum Hops
6oz Toasted Oak Chips
California Ale Yeast

The magnum is for bittering and the cascade is for aroma. Leave the oak in the fermenter for primary and secondary. Age on glass for 2-3 years.

Rooks Family Special Mead:

Blueberries
Clover Honey
Fresh Spearmint
Sweet Mead Yeast

Juice the blueberries.
Add sweet mead yeast.
Ferment 1 week.
Rack into honey at 2 parts juice to 1 part honey.
Add crushed mint leaves.
Rack after 6 months.
Age on glass 1 year.
Optionally, it is good to add the juice of champagne grapes to the blueberry juice.

I haven't made it yet, but this is on my very soon to do list. Adapted from Gotmead

Yeast: Lalvin K1v1116
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
Original Gravity: 1.120
Final Gravity: 1.010
Steep Time (Minutes): 45
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 15 days at 68F
Secondary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp): 35 days at 68F

4 Gallons apple juice (fresh local crush if possible)
2 lbs DME - light
3 lbs 60L Crystal malt
9 lbs Orange blossom honey (sourced from Beekeeper in Visalia)
2 lbs buckwheat honey (working on local source)
handful of dehydrated depleted vanilla beans
yeast nutrient in stages

Steep grains in 1.5 gallons of apple juice at 155F for 45 minutes and remove from heat. Stir in the DME and honey (all but 1lb buckwheat). Rinse grain sack with 1/2 gallon apple juice. Add the remainder of the apple juice. Aerate vigorously for five minutes. Pitch yeast starter with nutrient directly into the primary.

At about 1.075 add 5g nutrient
At about 1.035 add 5g nutrient
(Dissolve your nutrients in water before adding them to your must. This helps to minimize foam.)

Within about two weeks this should ferment out to 1.012 or so. Rack to secondary and add vanilla beans. Allow to remain in the secondary for about a month.

Rack again onto 1 lb of buckwheat honey and 5 campden tabs and 2 1/2t potassium sorbate to stabilize. Add clarifyer if desired. Bulk age for six months to a year before bottling.

I just started a holiday metheglynn with the much appreciated assistance of Beardy.

3/4 gallon local honey
1/2 liter maple syrup

2.5 sticks true cinnamon
18 allspice crushed
5 star anise stars
1tbsp nutmeg
1 large handfull bitter orange peel
1tbsp-ish vallencia orange peel

1/4 tsp yeast nutrient
sweet mead yeast

I heated 1 gallon of water to a simmer and melted the honey and maple syrup into it. I lowered the heat, added all of the spices and allowed to steep for two hours. Then I transferred to a carboy and allowed to cool for two hours before adding nutrient and yeast. The yeast had been in my frozen yeast farm for about a year and without a starter took about a day and a half to colonize and really take off. I had violent fermentation for half a day and it has been bubbling happily ever since. I am hoping to have a smooth holiday beverage in time for Christmas next year in 14 months.

I want to do a Chocolate Bochet. Not sure on my malt:honey amounts. Got any feedback on this:

1lb Chocolate Malt
1.8lb dark Wildflower Honey
American Ale yeast
Add water to 1gal.

I'll cook the honey outside til it's quite dark, hopefully without it exploding and burning off my face in a molten caramel facial. Steep the malt in water in a typical manner. Add the HOT water to the caramelized honey, then cool to pitching temp.

I bottled this years Elderberry Wine. It's only been in secondary for about 3 months, but I'm quite happy with it as a young wine. I'll stretch out drinking it until picking time next year.

My cyser turned into a neutral, 10% filler. No apple or honey taste. This will probably just get flavoured a gallon at a time and drank. I had high hopes, and the smell of brown sugar and apples during fermentation was misleading.

I've got a 1gallon bottle each of Elderberry and Blackberry mead to bottle very soon. These should both be quite tart, and may get tucked away to bottle age. Maybe not.

Got a spot in my cabinet opening up, so time to make something. Looking for input. Enough spices for 5 gallon?

10# Orange Honey
2lb Brown Sugar
5 16oz cans unspiced Pumpkin
2 crumbled sticks real Cinnamon
1 tsp ground Allspice
1 tsp ground Cardamom
1 tsp grated Ginger
2 cloves
2 vanilla beans
71B1122

Lightly roast the pumpkin. Start with whole spices and grind course. It should ferment dry, then I'll stabilize and backsweeten. Looking for around 9% ABV.

EDIT: Bottle aging. Time, why do you have to move so relatively slow?!

Recipe is based on 6 gallon recipe. It'll be shaved down to 5 later.

6 lb Wildflower honey
1 lb Munich
1 lb CaraMunich
8 oz Special B
8 oz 40L Crystal
4 oz 75L Crystal
12 oz chocolate malt
4 oz Roasted barley
1 lb flaked Oats
2oz Fuggle hops 5%AA


1. Bring 12 quarts water to 122F and add all grain but chocolate malt.
2. Protein Rest - Hold 122F 30 minutes
3. Bring water to 155F and add chocolate, steep at 160F 30 minutes.
4. Batch sparge with 6 quartz @ 170F, sparge runoff about 4.5 gallons.
5. Boil 5 minutes.
6. As cooling, blend in honey
7. At pitching temp, pitch Lalvin 1122 starter

8. After secondary fermentation has finished, 12 lb wildflower honey & water will be blended in for a final volume of 6 gallons. Pitch Lalvin 1118 starter

* Due to apartment living restrictions, everything will be attempted on an electric stove. Grain is in a bag and removed from the pot, rather than the mash poured into a mash tun. Sparging is attempted by dunking the grain in a second pot of sparge water, rather than rinsing in the mash tun. Cooling for my meads has always been done by natural cooling without a problem. If I find a necessity to cool quicker, it will be by a redneck method to be determined.

Malkore's Ancient Orange Mead. Taken from homebrewtalk.com and previously based on Joe's Ancient Orange.

Sweet Mead Yeast
Batch Size (Gallons): 5
13lbs honey
3 medium oranges
2 cinnamon sticks
2 whole cloves

Process:

Wash the oranges very thoroughly, and then zest the exterior, stopping before I hit any white rind/pith. Hand squeeze the rest of the juice out of the orange, and set it aside.

Dissovle honey in 2 1/2 gallons of 160F water. Add the zest, cinnamon, cloves, and juice, plus yeast nutrient and energizer (added per the label's instructions).

I let this steep 10 minutes, then cool it down.

Added to carboy using a strainer to remove the spices, zest and pulp from the OJ, and topped off to 5 gallons. I'll probably thrown one of the cinnamon sticks into the primary too.

When cooled, pitch yeast.

Primary for a month, secondary for two, then drink.