Another shot at a bochet, since the last few seem to have turned out so well. This batch uses blackberry honey from Glory Bee Honey Farms in Eugene, Oregon, a gallon of which my mother gave me. Since we've been naming bochets to suggest Prince's song Raspberry Beret, we're just cribbing part of a line to name this batch and calling it Old Man Johnson's Farm.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 6 lb., 2 oz. blackberry blossom honey from GloryBee, moderately caramelized by heating, covered, for 240 minutes in our Crock-Pot on low (in two separate batches).
  • 2 lb. GloryBee blackberry honey, not caramelized, heated briefly in the Crock-Pot to help soak out the caramelized honey.
  • 3 lb., 6 oz. GloryBee blackberry honey, not caramelized.
  • 8g Fermaid K.
  • 1 packet Lalvin 71B-1122 wine yeast, rehydrated.
  • Addition of 1 April 2022:
    • 1.5 oz. (wet weight) medium-toast Hungarian oak cubes (approx. 0.8 oz. dry weight), soaked for several months in Bulleit bourbon.

Procedure

Heated just over three pounds pounds of honey in the Crock-Pot for four hours on LOW, then poured it into water in the three-gallon carboy; heated another three pounds for four hours, poured it into the carboy. Heated two pounds of honey for fifteen minutes to help dissolve off the remainder of the caramelized honey from the side of the Crock-Pot, then poured it into the carboy. Filled the Crock-Pot with water and switched it to HIGH for twenty minutes, then poured that water into the carboy. Added Fermaid K, then topped off carboy to three gallons' worth of liquid. Pitched the yeast.

Did not measure the gravity here: there was so much undissolved honey stuck to the bottom of the carboy that it would have been pointless.

Brew date: 27 December 2020.
Original gravity: approx. 1.150.
Bottling date: 20 August 2022
Final gravity: 1.045
Estimated ABV: Approx. 16¾%.

Yield:

  • 4 x 12 oz. beer bottles.
  • 1 x 750mL wine bottle.
  • 12 x 500mL wine bottles.
  • 6 x 375mL wine bottles.

Total: About 352⅓ fluid ounces, or just about 2¾ gallons.

Observations

  • 2021-08-08: Racked into new sanitized 3-gallon carboy.
  • 2021-04-01: Added bourbon-soaked Hungarian oak cubes.
  • 2022-08-21: Bottled, yielding just about 2.75 gallons of sweet (1.045!) mead at nearly 17%.