Brewing a Braggot

Let’s look at a Braggot recipe and brew-day

So, what is a braggot…?

…and how do we go about brewing a braggot? Well, it’s perhaps expressed well by the BJCP guidelines description:

“A harmonious blend of mead and beer, with the distinctive characteristics of both. A wide range of results are possible, depending on the base style of beer, variety of honey and overall sweetness and strength.”

So, it’s as much a beer as a mead, and should be balanced to showcase both the honey and the malt. It’s should be hopped, but only to provide balance to the richness of the fermentables, not enough to overpower them.

Now, I’m no Braggot expert, in fact this is my first Braggot. Which is quite surprising considering I’ve been brewing for quite a number of years now, and Mrs Brew and Build keeps bees as a hobby. To be fair though, it’s only this year that we have extracted enough honey to justify brewing with it. The short of it is, that this is really as much an experiment, as an instructable.

Let’s get started

The recipe I’ve developed is an attempt to compliment the honey that our bees produce. It’s a medium amber honey, and has a reasonably rich taste. It’s not particularly dark or strong, but it is dark enough that I felt the malt I need to match was going to have to have some darker hints. So I’ve ended with a roughly even split of Munich malt and Pale malt. To that I’ve added some wheat malt to add body, sweetness and some head retention. To finish it off, I’ve put in a small amount of Chocolate malt for colour and depth.

For hops, I’m using Northern Brewer. I like the slightly softer bitterness it gives, and hope that it will sit well with the mead side of the finished product.

As for yeast, well braggot is an ancient brew, so I’m going with an old yeast. Kveik. Mangrove Jacks Kveik, which I believe is the Voss strain.

As for water profiles, I’m maybe going a little left field here. I’m looking at the honey as a higly fermentable sugar that will ‘thin’ the beer down somewhat, so I’m adding back some ‘fullness’ with the high chloride levels. I have had some issues with lighter/lower gravity beers with this profile, where the minerally harshness has come through. Generally with this sort of starting gravity, and sweet finishing beers, this profile has worked well. the mineral dryness on the finish offsets the sweetness. We’ll see I guess….

Braggot Recipe Ingredients

First we’ll add 24.5 litres of water and the mineral adjustments, then bring the temperature up to our mash rest of 67 degrees c.

While we’re waiting for the water to heat up, it’s time to mill the grains.

The mash

Once the mash water is heated, we add the grains.

This will get a recirculating mash for 60 minutes at 67 degrees c, followed by a 5 minute mash out at 77 degrees c.

After 60 minutes mash, I’m taking a small wort for an iodine test, to make sure all the starch has converted to sugar. If there was starch present, then the iodine would go purple/brown. As you can see though, the iodine has remained yellow. Starch converted.

After mash out, we remove the grains and begin the boil. This will be a 60 minute boil. So time to weigh out the hops. Hops additions are at 60 minutes and 15 minutes

The Boil

I’m using a hop basket, which i position over a rising boil fountain so that i get good circulation through it.

60 minutes boil time later, we’ll chill the wort down and take a gravity sample. As can be seen in the next picture, we’ve hit our pre-honey gravity of 1.041.

Time to do a quick transfer to the fermenter, making sure to slash plenty of air/oxygen into the wort as we go.

Transfer for fermentation

Now, to make it a “Braggot”. Let’s add the honey. We’re adding 2000 grams of honey here, which brings our gravity up to 1.076. Our honey is fresh and reasonably warm, so it’s easy to stir in. If it’s set honey, then it’s a good idea to warm it up until it’s running. I’m not going to stir mine in too thoroughly, as the fermentation temperature is going to be 30 degrees c, and sitting on the heat mat will keep any honey on the bottom runny and accessible to the yeast.

This is a reasonably high gravity beer, so I want to give the yeast the best chance I can. Therefore I’ve re-hydrated the dried yeast in warm water for 15 minutes which gives the cells a chance to reactivate before being hit with a high sugar diet. Having said that, this is kveik, and I’m not sure it needs much help, it’s a bit of a beast…

Time to put it on the heat mat and let it ferment. Fermentation temperature for this is going to be 30 degrees c. This yeast is always fast to get going, and sure enough 1 – 2 hours later and it’s already bubbling.

Nearly 5 weeks later…..

Yep, this took a while to ferment out. Which is quite unusual with this yeast. My usual experience with this M12, is that it’s about done by 4 days, and by day 10 it’s completely finished. However, I’ve never tried it on a higher gravity beer, so perhaps this is the norm here….

The final gravity is 1.011 which equates to about 8.7% alc/vol. Beersmith was predicting an FG of 1.006 or 9.3% alc, so this is a little off the mark, and may not be as dry as I would have prefered.

Time for a gravity transfer to the Unitank, which has been purged with CO2.

Once it’s transferred, I set the temperature to 3 degrees c…..

…… and when the temperature has dropped, it’s time to add some finings to drop out the yeast and haze. First I fine it with gelatin, then 24 hours later, I hit it with a dose of Kieselsol/Biofine Clear. Generally this clears up just about any beer, however, after 48 hours, this one still looked pretty hazy. So I gave it another dose of Kieselsol, which dropped out a whole load more sediment. A week later, and it looks ok, but certainly not as clear as I would like. 3 fining doses is about my limit, so I set the pressure to 14 psi on the carb stone, and let it carbonate. A couple of days settling, and it is time to bottle. Out with the beer gun.

Bottling the braggot

So, as usual, we’re bottling with the Blichman beer gun.

Drinking the finished Braggot

On opening the bottle, there is an immediate aroma of honey, even at arms length. The carbonation is adequate, but on the lower side, which I think suits the style. There is also a slight aroma of citrus.

The first taste is honey, and quite pronounced. Immediately after, is a note of citrus, a little like a honey and lemon tea combination. Unfortunately this citrus clashes a little with the honey. The sharpness of the citrus twang overwhelms the taste-buds a little and gives a slightly empty mid section of the tasting. However, that clears up and the end of the sip finishes with malt and grains. This graininess continues to linger through to the aftertaste, and you’re left with faint tastes of the malts, which makes you want to take another sip.

The water chemistry has worked well I think. The slight dry minerally finish that the water brings helps to dry out the sweet honey at the end, and helps to make you want another sip of the sweet honey you get at the start.

In conclusion, I’m happy with the base recipe of fermentables in this, however, I think the yeast choice was wrong. I believe it’s the Kveik that is giving a citrus twang. This twang has been noticeable in some other beers I’ve used it in, albeit much fainter, but it has manifested itself much stronger here.

I’d be very tempted to try this recipe with a lager yeast, to get a clean canvas for the honey and malt to be showcased alone.

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