Toasty Mead

[Mazaruni]

Dear Mead Folks,

I am planning a test batch of a bochet mead that involves all things toasty. My plan is to caramelise about 80% of the honey, rather strongly, but not burned, with the remaining 20% orange blossom honey. When fermentation is complete, I plan to stabilise with sorbate and K meta. Then I would like to toss in a bunch of things that have "toasty" flavors, maybe instead of an f pack, and to get to off-dry level of sweetness: toasted pecans, toasted marshmallows, toasted cocoa nibs and a bit of toasted oak. After that, I will clear with Bentonite and/or SuperKleer.

What do you think? Any of these flavors going in a bad direction? I think they all mix with caramelised honey but who knows.

My orange bochet is going OK for a test batch, I just wish it was a bit more toasty.

Cheers!

 

[BernardSmith]

Sounds like this will be very delicious. Not sure how effective the nut flavor might be. Just a suggestion but you might consider making an extract by adding the roasted pecans to some vodka and use the extract before bottling.

 

[Mazaruni]

I think you're right after reading the threads about pecan wine on this site and on a mead site about problems removing nut oil. Someone said winemakers usually don't want additions of homemade extracts and meadmakers are OK with it. I think adding flavors to wine with homemade extracts sounds fun, though.

 

[Desolus]

Since the thread is going down this path... XFB makes a far cleaner neutral than beverage distilleries care to, and you can buy it on amazon.

The good sents company also has a complete line of esters if you know what you want to be targeting.

Table of esters for your reference.

 

[Mazaruni]

Desolus, even though I extremely don't get that, it's super cool.

 

[Desolus]

What don't you get about it?

 

[Mazaruni]

How to use it. Also when it says "from the alcohol," I guess that must mean some manufacturer makes the ester from the alcohol. I assume if you are making wine at home, you don't get much other than ethanol.

 

[Desolus]

Esters are chemical compounds occuring naturally from the union of alcohols and carboxylic acids. There are many other alcohols present during a fermentation and many esters from the ingredients themselves. Generally speaking, everything that has a wine bottle on it can be had from regular grape fermentation with modern wine yeast.

Alcohols are used as intermediates in sugar conversions all the time in biology, so you're going to get all kinds of them in diverse sugar sources like grapes and honey, less in less diverse sugar sources like malt grains. starches are generally broken down into the smallest sugars possible during the brewing process.

That said, you can always simply ferment haphazardly at any random temperature or gravity and then just add the esters you want after the fact. You only need micrograms for the small batches that we brew and a 100g vial is around 30 bucks so it's very cheap to flavor(scent because they don't actually have any taste at such low levels) your beer/wine/mead etc.

Esters are effective at creating flavor and scent profiles in the parts per billion range, the yeasties don't need to make much of anything wierd for the flavors to be completely different. And that's why yeast strains are such a big deal to maintain, one very small mutation in the yeast and you can get completely different esters. So our wines are really protected more by the yeast labs than even the vineyard managers.

Edit: http://www.thegoodscentscompany.com/pricoffr.html <-- the page can be a little hard to find so here it is. I was able to call in an order without a resale cert,(I have one but I'm not buying for resale so technically illegal to use it here lol) you'll just need to sound competent and pay sales tax.

Edit 2: I highly recommend the blood orange, man it smells great.