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When you cook down honey...
- Thread starter McJeff
- Start date
What are you talking about? If you evaporate the water then you have a higher concentration of sugars??? Or do you mean do they split into simpler sugars? WVMJ
That's a good question. My understanding of it is that it converts some of the sugars to compounds that are less 'digestible' by the yeast. Now, I saw a post a while back from someone making a bochet that had it ferment dry (<1.000, iirc), but others have said that it makes some of the sugar inaccessible. Perhaps the stuff that fermented dry was only lightly caramelized. I don't know.
I've got a bochet going now with heavily caramelized honey. I'll be watching it to see how dry it actually gets. The max ABV is 14.xx% and the yeast's tolerance is 16%, so if it doesn't ferment dry, I think that'll be as much proof as I need.
Now as to whether these compounds are perceived by us as sweet, or whether they leave anything other than the 'cooked' qualities behind, I dunno.
There are several people here who have made several bochets, so hopefully they'll pop in and enlighten both of us.
Joe
Are the sugars concentrated down or is some of the sweetness cooked off. I know the flavor changes just wondering about the sweetness.
I don't know how accurate or applicable this is, but I liken it to toffee vs. sugar. The taste is stronger. Different, but definitely sweet. I don't find it sweeter, but that may just be my tastebuds being off the scale.
I hadn't thought about the 'concentration' angle, but its true that you're removing.... hmm... is it 18% moisture in grade a honey?.... so you'd have the same sugar in a smaller volume. But to my taste, once you get to "too sweet", "too sweet + 18" doesn't register.
When I measured out for my bochet, I used the pre-cooking weight of the honey (and then it boiled over and I lost some and had to eyeball replenishing it). The SG came out pretty close to where it should have, but who knows how close I actually got when 'measuring by eye' to replace the honey that boiled over the side.
Hope this helps... or at least not makes it worse.
Joe
You made a good point. Think I'll try a 1g batch cooking all 3.5 and see what the SG is compared to what the calculator says it should be.
Now there's a plan! Just don't do what I did and let it sit in the crock pot till it bubbled over. If I had been right there to stir it every once in a while (I DID stir it, but I was away for a couple of hours), I'd know how it converted over.
And don't fret the thick, seemingly immobile portion that sticks to the pan/crock. I found that it dissolves fairly easily if you add water to the pan and just mix it around with your stirring spoon. From there, you can just pour it into the jug and rinse with more spring water to make sure you get it all.
Good luck, and I'm eagerly awaiting your results, since I screwed mine up.
Joe
Unless you actually cause a chemical change (ie burning the sugar), the mass of sugar will remain constant, the mass of water will decrease so you'll end up with the same amount of sugar but with less water and so a smaller volume.
And as far as converting sugars, I have no idea if we're inverting them, if we're building more complex sugars from them, if we're oxidizing them, if we're doing something else altogether. It was my understanding that inverting sugars (turning complex sugars into simple ones) required heat and an acid. I don't know if the pH of the honey suffices.
Regardless, its different from a traditional, and it smells pretty darned good.
Joe
From everything I've seen, bochets are weird. I made a gallon of Bochet Cyser I brought the honey to 350F, just below scorching and mixed it with apple cider. I ended up with an OG of 1.133 and I pitched with 71-B and it stalled at 1.050 which was still too sweet so I repitched with EC-1118 and nothing. So I put a balloon on the top and put it on a shelf. A month or so later I looked in there and the balloon was half inflated so I pulled it out and put an air lock on it again and it chugged away for another month. I've got to take another reading on it to see where it's at now. For all I know it could start up again.
THAT is interesting. Did you check pH? I'm wondering if the yeast went active again because there was more food in the form of dead yeast, if the sugars.... broke down and became 'available' to the yeast, or something else.
Anyone got a degree in molecular gastronomy? <grin>
Joe
It is quite common for restarts with a fairly high level of alcohol to show no activity. The fermentation goes through a very prolonged lag phase and will just have a quiet slow drop in gravity over a period of weeks. Congregations on a successful restart.
