How do I safely caramelize honey without fully burning it?

In the event that you aren't keen on buying/using a candy thermometer, I thought I'd add some additional information.

The 'soft ball' stage in candy-making is the stage where the sugar has thoroughly melted - meaning it's no longer granulated. The non-thermometer testing method is to drop a small amount of the mixture into cool water, and see if it forms a soft ball.

When making a generic caramel, you're mixing butter and sugar, and heating until the sugar melts. If you add this mixture to water prematurely, it separates into sugar crystals and oil. If the sugar is melted, the mixture hardens without separating - the liquid sugar reforms to a uniform, connected, solid.

But this doesn't seem like what you actually want...

You want to impart a small amount of 'smokiness' to the flavor. Merely getting to the soft ball stage will, yes, melt your sugar crystals and change the consistency of your honey, but you'll need to go further to actually change the flavor.

As Jefromi said, the key to not ruining your honey will be to add heat slowly and evenly. Use a low-heat setting and continuously sample the mixture. Once actual caramelized sugars start to form (a portion of the sugar burns), you should notice it in the smell and taste. You have to keep the ratio of burned : unburned sugars reasonable. And your brew might benefit from a more pungent caramel than you'd want to eat plain, but that's a decision you'll have to make for yourself.

Good luck, and happy brewing.

In case you are still looking for caramelised honey guides, and not caramelised sugar guides, I have found the following:

• lemony caramelised honey
• plain caramelised honey
• another plain caramelised honey recipe

And to add the smoky flavour, first make smoky honey:

• recipe here

Personally for smoking I would do it in the oven with wood-chips/herbs of the appropriate flavour. The simplest instructions for home smoking without a custom smoker I have found are here though there are many YouTube videos showing how to add smoked flavour using a normal oven and a baking tray.

I have added this link as an example on how to do the smoking, all you would do is swap the meat with honey in an ovenproof container.

Solid sugar melts at 186 degrees C, sugar and water at about 132 degrees C, honey is between 40 and 50 degrees C if crystallised, or if non crystallised then it is melted at room temperature.

So be very careful as to how hot you go or your expensive honey will end up being expensive char.

For the smoking I would sduggest a slight modification to the norm for honey: use an ovenproof container the rest as per the meat, only put the oven on to about 50 degrees C though, and set fire to the wood-chips yourself, letting them smoulder (a chefs torch works for this) I have used similar techniques when making uncooked ham (for cooked, just use the way that is shown in the video). I am not sure what temperatures you heat the honey to before use in mead-making however, if they are higher you could use them instead of the 50 degrees C limit above.

The main point to note though is that its a two stage procedure to get smoky and caramelised.

You mention you are making a bochetomel, so have included the simplest guide I could find on that too, as it has another way to caramelise the honey. ( I am thinking of using that in conjunction with this to make an eldeberry bochetomel for my wife).

Using the microwave to caramelize honey works great. You can achieve any grade of caramelization just by adjusting the power and time. The only tricky part is to keep an eye on foam creation. Whenever the liquid builds up bubbles you have to wait some time until you continue microwaving.

I used a pressure cooker and three large jars. It was a ton easier than standing over a pot stirring for hours. I think I got the info on it from the homebrew forums, check there or google it, there are a few how tos out there, but it's pretty straight forward if you've used a pressure cooker for canning before...

I'm late to the party, but have been searching for similar content (obviously). One of the suggestions that I read was to use a slow cooker (crock pot) on low setting. It will start to caramelize after about 4 hours and you can continue, depending on how much caramelization you want, probably stopping before 6 hours.

Things to keep in mind include:

• because of foaming, have the initial honey take up less than 1/3 of the total volume
• stir, less frequently at first, more as you get to the 3+ hour mark
• while stirring, be sure to scrape any honey off the sides

Personally, while making a bochetomel, I would go with half caramelized and half raw honey. I would use inexpensive honey for the caremalization since the heating will destroy the subtleties, but then use the more expensive local honey for raw.

Curious as to what you did and how it turned out.

My original comment was based on reading, this is based on doing.

I tried the slow cooker (crock pot) method and am happy with the results. I added 3 pounds of honey, making sure that it took up less than a 1/3 of the crock pot, and kept the crock pot on low. I did stir and scrape the sides, but I'm not convinced that was really necessary.

I used the take a little bit out, drop it on a paper plate method of determining how far through the process I was (and of course, once the sample cooled, tasting it). The color didn't really change until about 4 hours. At 4.5 hours, the flavor was sufficiently like caramel that I decide to stop versus continuing to the "toasted marshmallow" stage.

On the low setting, the heat was low enough that I never got more than an 1/8th of an inch of foam on the top. I had placed the entire crock pot into a plastic box just in case. Thankfully, that wasn't needed (this time).

After unplugging it, I waited for the temperature to drop below the boiling point of water (candy themometer is handy here), and then stirred in a half gallon of water. I then ladled the caramelized honey water into the 2 one-gallon fermenters.

I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of clean-up. I was expecting a nightmare, but it was exceptionally painless. After moving the honey to the fermenters, I just had to rinse the crock pot ceramic and use a damp sponge. Easiest crock pot cleanup I've ever had.

I ended up using about 3 pounds of caramelized honey, just under 4 pounds of raw honey, split between two one-gallon fermenters. The specific gravity ended up being 1136 and 1132. The two fermenters are bubbling away as I type.

It's too early in the brew cycle for regrets, but I have since read that the caramel flavor will probably be removed during the fermentation process. I started wondering if I should have caramelized all of the honey, but read where someone had, and they wished they had gone 50/50.

I wonder if next time I should plan on having the bochet go dry and then back sweeten with caramelized honey (cheating?).