Was it the idea of a dirty kid finger in there that made you imagine it was bad or did it turn into vinegar or something terrible smelling? WVMJ
It turned into a terrible smelling concoction that had distinct notes of vinegar. If you got a good whiff of it, it would sting the nostrils. It was sort of a combination of dirty feet and vinegar, actually.
Trust me, if it's bad enough for me to throw out, it's beyond help...
Now that we've established that no, I'm not a rookie who would throw out good mead, we can continue.
I couldn't wait until this weekend, so I started that bochet just a couple hours ago. I ended up with ~6.5lbs of honey, so I'm making two gallons of it. Firstly, when I threw everything in the pot, still crystallized, I had to get a pic of it. It looked so terrible I had a good long laugh. The dark honey on top there is the forest honey... I thought it rounded out the bee puke look to the stuff.
Once it all melted, it started to look pretty nice, and ALL I could smell was the chestnut honey. It surprised me that it took over on top of everything else, as there was only 1lb out of 6.5 in there.
That pic was just as the very first boil bubbles appeared. Took a little over an hour to turn black, now I'm just waiting for it to cool down a bit. I'll get a gravity reading later tonight.
EDIT: Topped off to 2 gallons of water, SG is 1.129. I'm using some K1-V1116, rehydrated with Go-Ferm. I'm pretty excited for this one.