Turning Soda Into Mead

I've made a lot of crazy batches of mead over the years, but this one got more attention than almost anything else I've filmed. Turning a two liter of Coke into a bottle of wine sounds like a joke until you actually do it and it works. I walked through the whole process in the video below and I'm putting the full written recipe here for anyone who wants to follow along without scrubbing back through footage!

If you're brand new to mead in general, I'd start with my guide to making mead for beginners first. This recipe assumes you already know the basics of sanitizing, pitching yeast, and reading a hydrometer.

What Is a Bochet?

A bochet is just mead made with caramelized honey instead of raw honey. You cook the honey down which drives off water, browns the sugars, and gives you flavors closer to toffee or dark caramel rather than anything floral. It's one of the older mead styles out there, first documented back in medieval France, and it's still one of my favorites when I want something rich and a little dessert like... fitting for this recipe. 

This batch is technically a double weird one. It's a bochet because the honey gets caramelized, and it's also what I've started jokingly calling a cursed mead, meaning a portion of the fermentable sugar comes from soda instead of honey. Coca-Cola already has caramel coloring and a decent amount of sugar in it, so pairing it with caramelized honey isn't as far fetched as it sounds. 

How This Recipe Works

The basic idea is simple. You caramelize your honey the same way you would for any bochet, combine it with Coca-Cola instead of plain water, ferment it out, then age it on some warming spices and oak to round out the edges. Coke carries its own acidity and spice character from the cola blend, so you're not starting from a completely blank canvas the way you would with a traditional mead.

One thing worth mentioning before you start: let your Coke go flat first. Leftover carbonation makes the must more acidic than yeast likes to deal with at the start of fermentation, so pour it out ahead of time and let it sit uncovered, or give it a good stir to get the CO2 out.

For a batch this size you'll want a proper glass carboy with room to spare, since this ferments vigorously in the first week. I use my Glass Mead Making Starter Kit for pretty much every batch I make these days, this one included.

Coca-Cola Bochet Recipe:

Batch Notes

• I caramelized my honey for 20 to 30 minutes over low heat, tasting every few minutes. You're looking for a flavorful, caramel smell and taste without any burnt or acrid notes. Pull it before you think it's done, it keeps darkening after you take it off the heat.
• I backsweetened my mead with additional caramelized honey post-fermentation. If you want to sweeten yours, make sure to add stabilizers first.  I go through the full process in how to stabilize mead.
  
• Primary fermentation ran 30 days, final product came out dry with a tangy caramel character and a noticeable cinnamon and lime brightness on the finish. Backsweetened to FG of 1.030 at around 13% ABV.

Day of Batching

• 2 lbs raw honey, caramelized
• 3/4 gallon Coca-Cola, flattened
• 2.5g K1-V1116 yeast (or similar wine yeast)
• 4g Fermaid O nutrient, staggered over the first 3 days

Post-Fermentation

• Juice and peel of 1 lime
• 1 toasted and charred oak stave
• 1/2 cinnamon stick
• 1/2 vanilla bean

Instructions

1. Sanitize all your equipment before you touch anything else.
2. Pour your Coca-Cola out ahead of time and let it go flat. You want the carbonation gone before it hits the fermenter.
3. Caramelize your honey in a saucepan over low heat, stirring frequently and tasting every few minutes, for 20 to 30 minutes, until it's flavorful and caramelly but not burnt.
4. Combine the caramelized honey and flat Coca-Cola in your fermentation vessel, leaving a couple inches of headspace. Record your starting gravity reading. 
5. Pitch your yeast.
6. Add your Fermaid O nutrients.
7. Stir until everything is combined, seal with an airlock, and ferment at room temperature out of direct sunlight. I recommend stirring vigorously once a day for the first few days of fermentation. 
8. Let it ferment for 30 days. 
9. Record final gravity and calculate ABV. 
10. Rack off the sediment into a clean, sanitized vessel, and stabilize. 
11. In a brew bag, add the lime juice, lime peel, oak stave, cinnamon stick, vanilla bean, and stir in additional honey as needed (make sure to consider the added volume when calculating adjusted final ABV). Taste weekly and pull the oak and spices once the flavor is where you want it.
12. Bottle and enjoy!

This one actually picked up some attention outside the usual mead crowd after the video went up. Popular Science and Hackaday both wrote it up, if you want to see how it landed with people who don't normally follow homebrewing.

People Also Ask

Does Coca-Cola Bochet actually taste like Coke? Not really, and that's part of what makes it interesting. Fermentation eats through most of the recognizable cola flavor since yeast is mainly after the sugar, not the flavoring. What's left is a caramel forward mead with a bit of spice and tang, and the cinnamon, vanilla, and lime you add afterward do a lot of the work bringing back something reminiscent of the original drink.

Can I use a different soda instead of Coca-Cola? Sure. Root beer, cream soda, and other dark sodas with some spice character tend to work well in this same style of recipe. Just keep in mind that highly acidic sodas or ones loaded with artificial sweeteners instead of real sugar won't ferment the same way, since yeast needs actual fermentable sugar to work with.

Do I have to caramelize the honey for this recipe? You don't have to, but I'd recommend it. Coca-Cola already brings a caramel like character to the table, and caramelizing your honey leans into that instead of fighting against it. If you used raw honey instead, you'd end up with a lighter, more straightforward soda mead rather than a true bochet.

Cheers, and happy mead making!