Applewood-Smoked Apple Blossom Honey Cyser with Calypso Hops | How to make mead with smoked honey
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- Опубліковано 26 сер 2024
- Have you ever wondered what smoked honey would taste like in a mead? We used our charcoal grill to smoke some apple blossom honey over apple wood, then mixed that with apple juice and appley hops to make a cyser (mead with apples). To top that all off, we used fresh apples to make this mead by including them in secondary. If you're wondering how to make mead with smoked honey at home, this video has you covered from beginning to end! It's apples. All the way down. Home brewed into a delicious, juicy, sticky, and fragrant honey cider.
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Recipe: Apples All the Way Down
Primary
8# applewood-smoked apple blossom honey
12 cans apple juice concentrate
1oz calypso hops
Water to five gallons
D47 yeast
Secondary
10# chopped apples
Tertiary
Stabilized
4# remaining raw apple blossom honey (back up to 1.030)
Racked and cleared
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How do you like your cider or cyser? Let us know in the comments (or on Discord)!
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#cyserrecipe #smokedhoney #howtomakecyser
Full recipe in the description! Smack that thumbs up in honor of Johnny Appleseed. :)
This combines three of the best things on this planet. Honey, Apples, and BBQ...
I love smoking meats. Brisket, ribs, pulled pork. I plan on doing a smoked series of meads and maple wines in the near future because of this. I made a vanilla series about 6 months ago. Vanilla trad, lavender vanilla, vanilla spiced cyser, and vanilla bochet. You buy ten vanilla beans and ya can’t make just one gallon. Now I want to do a smoked bochet, smoked trad, smoked cyser, smoke maple wine, and smoked acerglyn maybe with cinnamon clove and all spice. It all sounds so good to me.
I love seeing the taste graft...this needs to be done more in other videos....
A tip i would add: Liquids soak up smoke really well, and surface area hastens smoking as well, so you should use a big shallow dish. Would be interesting to play with smoking the apple must, and do bench tests experimenting with using smoked and unsmoked honey and must in both primary and secondary
So I just started homebrewing today and have been scouring the internet on how to make smoked-honey mead cause it's the first thing that came to mind when I thought about making my own mead. Finally found this video, happy to see it turned out good. Smoked the honey earlier today, starting the must tomorrow, though I'm doing a dry-traditional mead with habiscus and smoked clover honey instead of a cyser. Hope it turns out well xD
how did it turn out? I just smoked some. Should I just add it in secondary or in both primary and secondary to back sweeten?
I bet a smoked vanilla would be amazing!
I have a cider in primary atm. I smoked a variety of apples and put them in with the juice. I need to check it today. I’ve always been a fan of smoked meats, and have recently been turned on to Islay Scotches, so this just seemed perfect. Definitely won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
Just recently, I had a smoked IPA where it was the hops that were smoked. It was surprisingly and wierdly delicious!
M05 give it a shot, great especially hard fruit and peaches. The idea of this method is cool.
I once did an Ale with 5lbs of peat Smoked Malt, Once it was kegged it tasted like licking an Ashtray, I threw it in a corner and forgot about it for about a year and a half, When I tried it at a year and a half old, it was likely the single best ale I have ever made.
The Moral, give it a year or two and it could be AMAZING.
Well, guess I need to make a batch of this.
By the way, I am new to your channel. I really appreciate what you're bringing here.
Time: It is missing from recipe comments & would help so much. You know we’ll watch the video too 😊
Considering how much I love Islay Scotch, and how often I try to sneak smoked malt into beers, this sounds right up my alley. I did do a cider with dried chipotle before, and that smoky apple flavor was excellent.
Basically, this is just another reason why I NEED a smoker. The primary reason being smoked chicken wings. Wouldn't really fit on my teeny porch though.
I think EVERYONE needs a smoker, but I may be biased!
I’m admittedly not an experienced home brewer. Since discovering meads, I’ve been curious about making someone akin to an Islay or Island region scotch. Personally, I prefer the island regions (Juro, Talisker, Highland Park) to Islay. Hint of smoke with a pepper spice to it too. Mixed with apples or other flavors in a mead would be interesting.
Late to the party on this one, just mixed it up tonight... I am pumped. It smells awesome
Diggin those Chiptunes
8-bit era is my jam
@@DointheMost I used to find all my chip tune music from 8bitcollective, but now that the site’s down, I’m struggling to find new content.
Making my table beer saison while i listen to this video. Going to make my first wine abv mead soon with blackberries, ginger and red wine yeast
Chimney starter! Get one.
I've made hickory smoked mead, which came out with a very strong smoke flavor. It may end up as an injection marinade for pork shoulder barbecue. But I definitely want to try making some more smoked meads. I think next time I'll decrease the smoking time on the grill, and mix with non-smoked honey 1:1 so the smoke flavor won't be so overpowering.
I'm working on a smores mead using Amoreti smores flavoring and honey that was smoked on cherry wood!
I smoked Pineapple last fall for a bochet. I smoked it for about 5 hours on applewood, and the interesting effect was that it looses that kind of sharpness that you normally get when eating pineapple. I tasted it a couple months ago after backsweetening it, but I didn't notice that much of the smokiness in the flavor then. Of course I was 6 tastings in, so my memory was a little foggy.
Interesting results with the pineapple. I do believe the smoke flavors mellows considerably over time.
I haven’t enjoyed any of my pineapple brews, which is a shame since I’m right up the road from the Dole Plantation and they’re cheap. Have you made a regular pineapple mead? If so, how did they compare? I need to figure something out. I’m working on a pineapple/strawberry wine right now 🤞🏼
@@GreenWitch1 this is the only one I've made so far. I think pineapple is just one of those flavors that hates people. Either that or it needs some age. Yeast selection probably helps. I used 71b.
@@Bob_Belcher I used 71B also. I’m definitely letting it age. Maybe it’ll improve.
@@GreenWitch1 I think I also waited until midway through primary to add the fruit, and that could have helped too.
It is ridiculous how few videos on YT cover Smoked Honey Meads.
🤔
I’ll have to make one.
You could probably get a DRAMATICALLY different product by letting it age for six or more months before nuking with sulfates/ites.
I don't use these, and I notice a big big change once malolactic fermentation has taken its course. If you want a sharper, tart apple flavor you may not want that, but for my palate it's the most delicious flavor arrangement ever when all of the malic has become lactic.
All those . Nice!
Oh yeah!
13:40 I loved the plot... It's always going to be very difficult to convey a description of the tasting experience, but this is a nice way of representing it
With my first cyser I was advised to use a cider yeast for the first part of the fermentation since its limit was only 7%, and then switch to a second yeast for a higher ABV after the first. I think the mix helped for a good balance since the first yeast left a really nice apple flavor behind that stayed after the second ferment. I will definitely try using smoked honey for my next one if I can find a way to do it.
That’s interesting! I haven’t done a lot of co-pitching, but that certainly makes sense. I do love my D47.
seems quite interesting. I think if I were to try adding smoked honey to one of my brews I'd do it in the backsweetening phase so I can sort of adjust it for flavor. It is at the same time I would oak or add tannins/acids. Smoke is one of those flavors that ages into the alcohol, but can be knocked out of suspension. I wonder if this mead would exhibit the same effects as using still water on scotch.
Thanks for sharing the experiments and the ups and down -- curious to see how other smoked meads turn out!
I will try this but I will use a shallow dish and only a few pieces of mesquite. I usually only use a few pieces for a whole pork butt or brisket. maybe I will add a little chili as well for spice.
Smoke is a weird thing in brews but I’m glad you like this as much as you do. We don’t get a lot of smoked foods in America outside of smoked meats or sauces most of the time. So when I’ve done anything with wood smoke usually I get a response from tasters that it reminds them of a meat (like applewood smoked bacon) and that usually doesn’t go over very well. I wouldn’t mind trying to smoke an herb or botanical like vanilla bean husk or lavender which might appeal to more people.
That time I waaaaayyy over smoked honey for a mead with hickory it had an acrid ash taste until sometime after dropping clear in secondary, but the main body of the smoke will basically never go away. The only option to reduce the smoke is to blend it that I know of. I used it as a marinade.
Every time I’ve done a cyser and had enough patience to let it sit the apple character always comes back 30-50% more after 8 or so months aging, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that character as long as you’re 70% of the apple flavor that you want. It might have been good to do the most here to fight that smoke though.
I plan to keep the community updated on this one as it ages. Fortunately nothing super off in the flavor profile now. And the apple is nice and strong - I’d imagine it gets even better. Hopefully!
I would try Smoked Honey and Smoked Malt in a Braggot!
I had a oak cast that my buddy aged bourbon in and it camnout fantastic! It had bourbon and smokie flavors but deffently a weird noise to it. Oh I did a traditional mead in the cast too. I would definitely do it again
Standard mead: Add some plain mead as you’ve suggested before if it’s to smoky. However, I like the viewer comment about adding smoked honey in secondary to have more control over flavor.
Awesome! Such a good flavor idea.
We just bottled our firstsl spiced Cyser and love it, probably our favorite mead so far.
Spiced cyser, nice. I could see that working here too!
This looks incredibly interesting, and definitely on-brand.
Your comments about the smoke made me want to say "drink more Scotch", mostly to help expand your palette/lexicon.
Cheers! And thanks sharing the full process on this one. :)
I don’t drink a lot of hard liquor these days, but I definitely agree that would help give me more vocabulary words. 😁
Intriguing... I'd love to see other smoked experiments. I don't brew a lot but am gradually making more each year as the apiary grows.
I definitely think I’m going to play with smoking darker honeys to see how they play with fruit.
I saw your post on reddit the other day but didn't recognize the bench and shelf in the shot until a second look. It looked good then and does still now
It’s wild how well it turned out! Maybe a fluke!
This made me think of trying something along the lines of a smoked honey & sarsaparilla bochet. Hmmm time to add the idea to my ever growing list.
Ooo I love the idea of this. Curious how it would go in practice.
@@DointheMost you could also go for a kind of smokie candy apple, to try and get a caramel flavor. Or, (straight out of left field of my brain) a smokie chocolate orange mead (kinda like the chocolate oranges that people got at Christmas).
@@brentreece3905 Oh I love the idea of a smokey orangey chocolatey sack mead!
For future, if you can get green wood then youll get a much better cleaner smoke flavor. When you wet your wood like this it will be half smoke and half steam. If you cant get green wood then try lowering your heat to keep the dry wood smoking longer. Also close your exit vent more to keep the smoke trapped in the smoker longer and definitely play with the air intake vent to lower your temp on the coals.
I still need to add smoked mead to my list! Lol, I've never tried smoked anything (except food of course!)
This will probably sound super weird but I like giving weird compliments, so, a lot of the reason I enjoy your videos is because of your voice. Its very calming. Obviously the gained knowledge + cool ideas like this are the main reason but yea. Anyway, thanks for the content!
I'm about to start a braggot with Manuka smoked barley malt
Ive been thinking of making up a test batch of buckwheat honey mead, and spiking it up with specialty grains for richness and smoke flavours maybe also. Crazy idea yay or neah? btw huge fanboy of Islay scotches so never afraid of smoke
That was a lot of work smoking that expensive honey and everything. Great job.
I bought a pack of cider yeast recently. Used half of the pack in a normal cider, which is currently fermenting. Going to use the other half on a cyser that hopefully will be prepped soon.
If I had to do it again, I’d use cheap honey. The apple blossom contributed nothing of note.
Keep me posted on that cyser!
I have thought about trying this for about a year now! I never lit the fire under this idea though. I have tried to add smoke flavor with lapsang souchong tea after primary, but the flavour was lost quickly.
Definitely going to try this idea now!
Nice! I was happy it worked out how it did.
you’re a Dutch oven!🤣🤷🏻 been waiting for a while to see what you did with that smoked honey 🍯 great video ... killer soundtrack👍🏼
This video was a lot of fun to edit!
Maybe using a pellet smoker may be better..not only do you get a cleaner smoke profile, you could potentially bouchée the honey without the worry of scorching the honey because it’s indirect heat.
Just a tip because I used to soak wood chips for years and felt silly after someone explained why it was unnecessary. Soaking them doesn't do anything helpful and in fact can cause creosote in the smoke. The boiling point of water is lower than the smoking point of the wood, but you're not trying to reach the lowest smoking point of wood to get good smoking flavor. Good clean smoke comes at a temperature after combustion (don't recall off the top of my head, but 460F+ or something like that). Smoldering wood chips give you a bunch of nasty tasting creosote compounds that can make your stomach upset. I have the exact same smoker as you and as annoying as it is, when working with wood chunks you just have to keep feeding them like you're operating a steam engine. So not only do I no longer soak wood chunks; I actually put a few pieces in the offset smoker next to the fire so that they heat up and dry out before I even move them on top of the coals to combust and then move in more chunks to dry.
I just smoked honey in mesquite and now I am thinking I should back sweeten a mead with it and it has smoke spice too it I added. Any recommendations? Would smoked honey be better in 2nd fermentation?
also, any concern about oxidation - you seem to have about 0.75 gal of air there before the bottling stage
I wonder if a little bit of toasted cinnamin stick would have added to the apple flavor
Waiting to hear what a year does to the smoke. Does it calm down or stay heavy?
The smoke flavors that make a campfire scent and taste come from the wood being soaked in water. You want the smoke to be thin and blue, try to keep the white smoke down as much as possible. I am curious on what your smoker temp was? I would think we would want it under 200 to prevent bochet. I on the other hand love bocheted honey for my meads, I think I will try to smoke it at 240-250 to get a clean smoke and a little bochet to the honey.
I really like the notes of campfire in there. Gives me some nostalgia, feels like a nice slow down scent. I kept the honey well below 200, which is why it was on the opposite side of my smoker. I cold-smoke meat and cheese throughout the winter each year.
I wonder if using the charred wood used for smoking would add anything good as a tannin option. Probably too charred
You know, I've had some overwhelmingly smoked beers, I wonder if you charred some apple wood...what wouldthat be? Appled, or oaked it, if that would mellow the smoke.
I got some fermaid 0 for my latest batch of mead. I noticed it has a used by date so I keep it in the fridge. Problem is when I weigh out a little bit (on my micro scale) a bit of it (prob only .5 gram) seems to stick to the vessel I use. I was thinking about taking it out of the fridge and keeping it in a jar on the shelf but would that make the whole bag absorb humidity and go solid. I live in the tropics so things are a bit humid.
Now you tasted it ,How would you improve it?
I wonder if you smoked apple slices instead of the honey, if it would impart a more balanced smoke flavor from it being on something more acidic.
It wouldn’t be a Smoked Mead.
Love it. Gonna give this a shot. This is definitely doing the most haha. Only part not used from a apple tree is the leafs :-) garnishment for the glass?
I know - one has to wonder what the leaves could add. Tannin maybe? Haha
Did the hops add anything to the finished product? You didn't mention it in the tasting.
You should do this again, but take the apple wood, toast it, and age the mead on it.
Also, you could try smoking the fruit instead of the honey.
I legit considered aging on applewood! But the tannin profile was so nice, I ended up not doing it.
How do you reach so cristal clear mead? I spend months waiting and finish with a smoked color...
I have been planning on trying to smoke some honey my friend has a cold smoker that I'm going to use. I was worried about smoking it in my grill because I was worried that I would end up brocheting the honey. Since it has temperature control I was probably going to do it around 80 to 90° so that it stays moving but doesn't cook, his smoker goes down to 36° but I figured that would just make the honey hard.
80F would probably be the sweet spot!
Doin the most needs to invest in a floor corker!
Were you not able to find a bigger funnel?
what was the temp on your smoker during the BBQ session ?
How about tobacco stave mead?
Do you think throwing some oak in a drink like this would enhance it or hurt it??
Where did you buy the apple blossom honey?
I have found 71b goes completely bonkers with my cysers..as in done in a week or less sometimes. My favorite by far has been a bochet cyser version I made a while back. It was reminiscent of a caramel apple but not quite. This one also didn't take nearly as long to get the funk out that my other cysers took, about 2-3 months instead of 6-8.
Bochet cyser is peak! I need to make one sometime. I have had several great ones.
What about a smoked bochet?
I think I will try this, but I’m thinking I might change it up a bit and smoke my apples instead of the honey. What do you think? Or maybe I will just do it both ways.
I received an email from someone experienced in smoking both honey and fruit after this video published, and they recommend trying smoked fruit, too! I will probably have to give it a go myself. :)
@@DointheMost I am making your pineapple mead and plan on smoking some chili's to add to secondary.
With this music it's almost like I'm watching a ManMadeMead video!
They are friends.
Even credited him at the end for his contributions:)
@@BloodKnight360 I know, it's just that music is a big part of a UA-cam channels identity
This is super timely for me. I recently did an Apple Bochet, and without anything else it's surprisingly like whiskey. Because of that I wanted to get the smokiness in that bottle as well because well, Laphroaig. It's a fun conversation piece, and if done well is a good drink. However, to get the smokiness I was going to mess around with adding Lapsang Souchong instead of smoking the honey, but who knows, maybe I should just make a friggin Marlboro Mead with Lapsang and Smoked Honey because why not (yes I think that would sort of be gross and no I wouldn't add tobacco leaves as an adjunct because that's a great way to blow chunks)
I’ve seen folks recommend liquid smoke for brews before. Maybe an option! Haha
@@DointheMost I think you're just egging me on to make a mead named "Sorry Dana Farber"
@@johnburke8337 haha that went dark fast
Dutch oven
Farting under the blanket then lifting it up trapping your significant other under the covers
Rosemary wasn't expecting a dutch oven but she got one this morning.
For a second there I thought you were gonna take a swig straight from the bottle lol
Considered it
So would you change anything in this mead? Or did you hit it out the park on the first pitch? That's definitely DointheMost!!
I think my biggest takeaway was that I didn't care for the apple blossom honey, especially at that price. It didn't WOW me like it should've. I would sub in a cheaper, but still fruity honey next time. We'll see how this ages, though. I think it will peak around the holidays in November/December.
maybe you could fat wash the mead in smoked bacon fat or something like that?
I saw this video and automatically thought smoked buckwheat capsicumel with berries.
Oh yeah - maybe smoke the peppers over the honey!
Is this reminiscent of scotch? If you had to do this again would you omit the smoke? Smoke less? And what was the FG after backsweeten
FG in the description with the recipe - 1.030.
I think the smoke mellowed a lot, which is nice. I probably wouldn't smoke it any longer than I did. I would probably not use expensive varietal honey, either. It's not scotchy, more savory. It's super interesting.
@@DointheMost - How is it now, two years down the line? Or, in case you happened to drink it all already, how was it after a year?
@@eddavanleemputten9232 I actually brought a bottle to Hoppy Camper a few weeks ago and it was a sensation! People still love it. Everything has melded well, but the apple and smoke still shine.
@@DointheMost - That seals the deal. As soon as I’ve got a fermenter free I’m cold smoking some honey! Not sure if I can get my hands on Calypso hops. I’ll ask the brewing supplies store and if they don’t have any, I’ll ask them for the best alternative to bring out the apple.
No else notice the mascot on his sweatshirt?
I think the word you're looking for to replace weird is "uncanny" It's weird in a surprising way
Yeah - I think that could fit!
Infusing honey with flavors should be the nect big thing
I had some excellent truffle honey from Honey Next Door. Maybe not great for mead, but killer on pizza.
Okay, a year and a half later: follow-up tasting?
What did you do with the apples after using them?
Right into the compost bin. :)
@@DointheMost might have had to make a cider on those just to see what flavors came over.
@@rtpmedic66 that’d be doin’ a whole lot!
Eeeee
$800 of honey into this brew?
No, $100 for a gallon of apple blossom. I’m not that rich!
Unique = Weird
And wonderful
I saw "applewoord-smoked", and immediately thought of bacon.
I think they’d pair nicely