Lactic T'ej

[bernardsmith]

This more to see another recipe than a recipe for JAOM..
Experimenting with rejuvelac (a lactic rich liquid made from adding water to sprouting grains - in this example, hard winter wheat berries) After 3 - 4 days the pH of the liquid is at 3.71. I added about 6 pints to 3 lbs of raw honey and 2.5 oz of inchet (gesho twigs).
T'ej is an indigenous sour mead from Ethiopia but I am experimenting with a lactic twist.
My plan is to allow the lactic bacteria to break down the honey for about 3 days and then add a pack of saison belle yeast and allow the fermentation to finish, back sweetening to about 1.015.
However, if the bacteria in the rejuvelac and the gesho are sufficiently active - the raw honey may also have enough (and desirabe) yeast I will forgo the lab cultured yeast to see where the t'ej may finish. If it finishes close to 1.010 then I will bottle this and if tasty will harvest the lees to start a second batch (no guarantees that any subsequent batch will turn out the same as the balance of the various bacterial and yeast cultures are likely to shift with the more aggressive cultures and the cultures more suited to the FG will tend to dominate...

 

[DerSchopferVonEbbelwoi]

This is interesting.... I always thought Tej and Mead were indistinguishable, not having ever tried Tej myself (yet). Please keep us updated!

 

[bernardsmith]

T'ej is a mead made to an Ethiopian recipe which calls for the addition of a plant known in the US as buckthorn and in Ethiopia as gesho. You can use either the twigs (inchet) or the leaves (kitel), so in other words, T'ej is to mead es, as say, apples or bananas is to fruit: T'ej is a subset of the universe of all possible meads -

 

[bernardsmith]

Quick update. Checked the SG this morning and it was about 1.010 so racked the t'ej off the gesho and the lees. There was enough really pleasant yeast in this honey to ferment this must and the taste of this t'ej is bright and sour and very drinkable. I have the lees in a jar and my plan is to begin another batch of t'ej using these lees as my starter. Perhaps an orange flavored t'ej* (yebirtukan t'ej)

* Strikes me that even if you don't have ready access to gesho you can make a US/European variant of t'ej by substituting beer hops for the buckthorn. Given that the bitterness of hops is used to balance the sweetness of most beers (they finish around 1.010 - 015) a 15 minute boil (in slightly acidic water, NOT honey water) might play similar notes as the gesho (notes played on a violin rather than a krar, if you know what I mean)