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When cooking down honey....
- Thread starter McJeff
- Start date
In that case skip the skimming the foam, when it cools you can filther out the chunks of proteins. Did you read all the warnings about the honey foaming up etc especially when you add water back and it likes to try to explode out of the pan? WVMJ
I've been wanting to test antifoam drops in a batch of boiling honey to see if they help keep the beast from erupting out of the pot.
I did a slow steady heating on med with a constant stir. Prob for 90+ mins. I waited a bit too long before skimming it started to stick together but I skimmed off most of the foam. I didn't reintroduce water till the honey was "touchable". This is a before and after of the wildflower honey.
Why do people skim off the foam if you're going to ferment it (and hence create MORE foam) anyway? If you're bottling it, sure, foam looks nasty, but if you're fermenting it? Even the old boil-your-honey mead recipes I have read always say to skim off the foam. I never saw the point (well, unless it's full of beeswax, but normal filtered honey still makes harmless foam)... if it's an impurity, it'll settle out with everything else after fermentation...
The last time I did this I didn't skim the foam and thought it tasted fine.
So I'll be curious of th answer myself.
So I'll be curious of th answer myself.
In the olden olden days wax, bee parts, skep fuzz, the impurities float to the top and are skimmed off, just like making good stock you skim the junk off of the top. When we did a Bochet we didnt skim, most of the proteins coagulated and chunked up so they were easy to remove. There is boiling your honey to make a regular mead and then burning it to make a Bochet, two different things we seem to be talking about. WVMJ
Right and I wonder if I really burnt the honey as much as I could have. After an hour and half in the kitchen my gf was rdy for me to be out of it.
I'm way too new to worry about a bochet currently, but it's high on my list.
I would have definitely taken it much further down, your finished product there post-boil looks like the local wildflower honey I get so I would want to get mine much darker
I would have definitely taken it much further down, your finished product there post-boil looks like the local wildflower honey I get so I would want to get mine much darker
After an hour and a half in the kitchen I would need to get me out! I'd like to try a small scale bochet, but the time cooking it seems more than I can handle...
Did you get some caramel/toffee/marshmallow like flavors out of it??
Did you get some caramel/toffee/marshmallow like flavors out of it??
I only had it on med for 90 mins, wonder how much longer I could have gone if I wasn't kicked outa the kitchen. Was afraid to put it on high and have it boil over. Do you actually burn burn it?
do you typically use more honey when cooking it down for a bochet? Since your losing some honey im assuming. Like lets say you need 3 1/2 lbs but if your cooking it down, would you up to maybe 4lbs?
Just like any sugar mixture you can burn burn it, to the point of having a very unhappy SWMBO sending you out to but another pot.
I would have to say no because you still have the same amount of sugars present, just different types of them now. Any volumetric differences would be due to water loss in the honey on it's way to becoming highly camelized. The lost water would be added back when you have to dilute it back down to make the must.
I used to make candy with my mother so learned a bit about making candies and mistakes (had to buy a new pot once due to lack of attention for a couple of minutes).
hmm ok, thanks. Was just wondering about that. Will be a little bit before I try one, but just something I was wondering while doing some reading on recipes and such.
Also, once it's cooled a bit, dissolving what's left in the pot with a little water and adding it to the must minimizes losses. It's remarkably benign if you dissolve it instead of trying to chip, scrape or scour it out.
