Tej

[carrry]

I made a simple Tej about three months ago from honey and water. The recipe said it was meant to be drank after a couple of weeks, but since it was still bubbling vigorously I left it. Three months later it is still bubbling. It tasted it and it tastes great. What is happening? Am I making mead?

 

[BernardSmith]

Carrry , Hi. I believe tej traditionally includes the leaves and woody stems of a plant called gesho which adds a mild bitterness to the flavor and in fact is used as the source of the yeast to ferment the honey. A colleague of mine from Ethiopia tells me that the wine IS meant to be drunk after a few weeks and I believe it would often be drunk while the wine is still fermenting (with some residual sugar and some fizziness) and cloudy. I have just made a gallon of tej but I cheated and used 71B-1122 to inoculate the honey along with the gesho. I also allowed the wine to ferment dry and then degassed it.
The other point is that many people say that honey frequently takes a fairly long time to fully ferment. That has not been my experience but I add yeast nutrient and increase the acidity of the honey. Without the nutrient, I don't think that honey provides a rich enough diet for the yeast. And I think (I am not certain about this but I think ) yeast prefers a relatively acidic environment to help it be the dominant fermenting agent in the wine. Your post suggests that you may only have diluted the honey with enough water to allow it to ferment. You don't say whether you relied on wild yeasts to ferment your honey or you deliberately inoculated your must with specific yeasts

 

[saramc]

I made a simple Tej about three months ago from honey and water. The recipe said it was meant to be drank after a couple of weeks, but since it was still bubbling vigorously I left it. Three months later it is still bubbling. It tasted it and it tastes great. What is happening? Am I making mead?

T'ej is a name for a style of mead traditionally made in Ethiopia, using gesho inchet and kitel, aka gesho twigs & dried leaves of a 'Rhamnus prinoides'. The inchet provides the yeast while the optional kitel acts like a bittering hops. In Ethiopia if you just use honey & water they call it 'birz'. But true t'ej is still fermenting and an early drinker. Commercially available t'ej is stabilized and bottled like other commercial wines. I think Sandor Katz has fruit based t'ej in one of his books and it does not even use gesho.

More info here, http://www.pitt.edu/~kloman/tej.html

My advice, if you like it now, take a SG reading, if not dry consider pasteurizing so you stop the ferment and start the clearing process. Or bottle, keep it cold & drink up!

Bernard, how is your batch doing?

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Sara, I bottled my gallon just over two weeks ago and my wife and I cracked open a bottle last week and we thought it was very drinkable. I did not have anything very much to compare it with except that the owner of my local wine and beer making supply store, coincidentally, had acquired a bottle of commercially produced tej and he offered me a sample to taste about a month ago. (He and I share samples from time to time and offer each other feedback). My tej was more dry than the commercial brand and was not as clear.
One of the students (they are all adult learners) at my college is from Ethiopia and he is familiar with tej. He offered to taste my tej and give me some feedback. I gave him a bottle and he has offered to send me a couple of glasses traditionally used to drink tej. For the record, he is not one of my students so there is no conflict of interest here.