Ingredients

5 gallons fresh pressed apple cider (fugi and honey crisp apples), 12lbs. wild flower honey, 2 lemons juiced and cut in half, 2 sticks of Ceylon cinnamon, 4 whole cloves, 1 tsp allspice, 1 pound preservative free golden raisins, Wyeast 4632 Dry Mead Yeast

Recipe

This was an adaptation from https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-to-make-medieval-mead-bochet and the malum-in-se-cyser. The recreation of the medieval style was to “put it in a cauldron on the fire to boil and stir until the honey blisters and bursts, giving off a little blackish steam”, which unlike modern recipes caramelizes the honey. I carmelized to a ruby red color (more toffee flavors). I opted to replace the cardamom with a small amount of allspice. Added spices, lemons, and raisins in the primary fermentation. A yeast starter was made using go-ferm.

Note: There is some danger to making this recipe due to potentials for burns when adding liquid to the caramelized honey!

Brew Notes

Accidently tossed the notes sheet. Best estimates were made based on the initial recipies, chat logs, and memory for the amounts of cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, and the OG reading.

Followed the standard yeast nutrient additon schedule with degassing as the old-world-mead. Removed the grapes, lemons, and spices when it was racked to a secondary fermentation (~1 month).

Tasting Notes

Carmalized honey has sort of just a bolder taste, more toffee notes and darker wild flower honey vibes but loses a lot of the lighter floral notes.