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Honey starting to ferment

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PapaScout

PapaScout

NewBee
Registered Member
Jul 10, 2014
132
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Indiana, US
This past week a friend of mine gave me 4 gallons of honey with too high water content that has started to ferment. It didn't smell too bad until I stirred it up and now I'm definitely getting a boozy weird smell from it.

It's on the stove now and I'm slowly heating it to about 180 where I'll keep it for a several hours to kill off whatever is making it ferment, burn off the alcohol, and dry out the honey.

I know this may not be salvageable which makes it kind of fun to experiment.

Any one else ever tried to recover honey like this?
 
If honey expands so much "when heated" (at what temperature?) then how do we ever successfully make bochet? I have heated honey in a crockpot at 350 F for 2 hours in my oven and the honey never overflowed the container. I don't think it expanded more than twice its original volume. But I am close to sea-level and so my experience may be very different
 
Perhaps it's because the honey was fermenting? I put 4 gallons of honey in a 7 gallon pot and 3 gallons of it ended up on the floor.
 
I had some honey from a generous HBT user that was a high water content. I went to use it and it was seeping out of the container. I thought the container had a crack and was seeping from there, but it was indeed fermenting. Tasted kind of winey, so I just made a batch from it.

Red Currant Sour Hydromel. (has that honey yeast as well as additional bugs).
Ready to bottle, just lazy.


I don't think it expands 1000x. I think it's closer to 2-3x. I've made a bochet at sea level (Boston) and one at the highest town east of the rockies (Bethlehem NH), no (significant) change in expansion.


I think your batch will be fine. Especially if you plan on adding extra things like fruit, spices, etc.
 
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