Braggot "recipe"- thoughts? comments? brickbats?

[BernardSmith]

Thinking of making a one gallon of braggot.
My list of ingredients go like this:
1.5 lbs of Maris Otter barley (mashed and boiled with...)
Nelson Sauvin hops (.2 oz 60 mins; .1 oz 15 mins and .2 oz after first racking (7-10 days)
2 lbs White Sage Honey (added to cooled wort before pitching yeast)
Nutrient
Saison yeast

3- 6 months aging
oak chips 7-10 days before bottling

My expected OG approx 1.120
My final gravity (about 1.010) (approx 14.5% ABV)

More malt, less honey? More honey, less malt? less dry hops (after that first racking)?

 

[botigol]

I might bring the honey down a tad, shooting for 13% abv, but that is personal preference.

Your flavoring hop addition is good or you could move it to a whirlpool or do both the 15 min addition and a whirlpool addition, starting the whirlpool once the temperature drops below 170°F.

Due to the aging, definitely skip the dry hop after the first racking; the aromas will age out relatively quickly. Save the dry hopping for right before bottling and I would keep it to about three days. I have only used Nelson once, but it has some grassy characteristics, so I wouldn't chance pulling extra grassiness out with extended dry hopping.

I would go pretty light on the oak. The flavors from the other ingredients are relatively subtle and you don't want to muddle the hop aromas and flavors. My anecdote for this is that I used 1/4 of a medium toast, French oak spiral in one gallon of a burgundy-style red for 48 hours; two and a half years later I am still waiting for the oak to integrate better.

I hope that this helps. Keep us posted!

 

[BernardSmith]

Thanks Botigol. I like it. I will likely avoid oaking and will dry hop far closer to bottling (although I wonder whether it will be easy to remove the mead from the hops to leave a bright /clear mead if I dry hop very close to bottling. The one thing I am less convinced about is reducing the amount of honey. I like beer (and I like my own beers made with maris otter ) but I want this to be at least as mead-y as beer-y... so I may simply increase the amount of water in the must/wort so that the OG reads closer to 1.100 - keeping the ratio of malt to honey the same

 

[botigol]

Yeah, hop debris could be an issue. You would probably need to chill for at least a few days to clear, if you're not going to make it sparkling. Gelatin fining could also help, but you would still need to chill it first.

 

[seth8530]

I would skip the dry hops and use them only in the boil. Then extract them from the boil using a hopsack.

I would also take the ABV down significantly if you actually plan on drinking this within 6 months. Is that final gravity based on your expected unfermentable sugars? Plus, I would substitute oak chips for cubes or spirals. I think the question to ask though is what percent of your sugars do you want to come from the honey and what percent from the malt. Maris otter is a pretty light tasting grain so you might want to use more depending on how strong you want it to come through.


I think you are free to do whatever you want to do. However, do you think that this project will end up with a balanced product as is?

 

[BernardSmith]

... do you think that this project will end up with a balanced product as is?

Hoping that it will be "balanced". Started this tonight. The mash before the boil, had a gravity of 1.035 . . After the boil (I added Galaxy hops) and the cool down, I added the honey (2lbs wild blackberry) and enough water to bring the gravity down to 1.090. Pitched Belle Saison yeast. Should be able to ferment everything but the most complex sugars from the grain and add some additional peppery flavor.

 

[seth8530]

Still sounds a little high on the ABV, but good luck. It is still not too late to take it down a bit further. With the kind of turn around you plan on having it might be for the best.

This one will be mostly honey from a fermentable perspective. However, I would not be surprised if the honey works well with the grain. I assume you plan on carbonating?

Any idea of the IBUs you plan on getting? So, if you added the hops after the boil they should be providing less bittering and more aromatic qualities... I am not a brew expert, but generally this lends itself to styles that have a quick turn around. Might be yet another reason to dilute down. I would not be against say dilute down to around 1.06 or 1.05, let the sassion yeast do its thing... Dry hop if you plan on it, and let her rip.

The main reason why I am suggesting this is because aromatic hoppy beers tend to be best served early because the hops aromatic characteristics degenerate over time. Plus, combined with your want of having a quicker turn around mead ( which is not typically compatible with most meads) I am thinking that a hydromel styled braggot might be want you want.

 

[BernardSmith]

Good points, Seth but I have made hopped meads several times and at a gravity of 1.090 they were ready to drink (and enjoy) - bright and clear - 6 months after pitching the yeast - amongst my favorite quaffables.
Last night I used 0.2 oz of hops for 60 minutes and .1 oz for 15 minutes. The IBU is difficult for me to calculate as I boiled only the mash made with 1.5 lbs of Maris Otter. That should create an IBU of about 44 but I added 2 lbs of honey with another 1/2 gallon of water while I was cooling the wort and so I am not sure if the actual IBU is closer to 26 But if the OG is about 1.085 and if the IBU is 44 then that ratio is 2:1 and that is fine, and if the IBU is half that then the ratio is 3: 1 and that is fine too. I guess I don't see reducing the gravity as a good option as in the case of honey that means I will water down the flavor.

 

[seth8530]

Right, well at the end of the day it is all about what you want.


I managed to try some really good hydromels from nektar creak up in Oregon and they were around 5% ABV, were dry and had really good honey flavor.

However, the whole argument over more honey and thus more fermentables and higher gravity= more flavor is an interesting one to argue.

Ie, would a mead that was fermented to say 16% with a final gravity of 1.000 taste more like honey than say a mead that was fermented to 13% with the same gravity. Complicated question to answer in my honest opinion. The alcohol flavors would increase for sure, but the question is how does that play into the whole equation of fermentation esters vs honey aromatics and all the such.


What I am wondering is that if at a lower gravity you have less other aromatic components to compete against the aromatics from the honey.

 

[BernardSmith]

But you also have less flavor. The paradox with honey - unlike other fruits and flowers - is that all the flavor in the mead comes from the same sugars that produce the alcohol. My point is that with other fruits, while they certainly contain sugars and those sugars will result in alcohol nevertheless, you can increase the amount of fruit (and so the flavor) without necessarily increasing the alcohol (think apple juice and cider or apple wine; think mangoes, think elderberries or elderflowers). But if I want to add more acacia flavor or orange blossom or - as in this case wild blackberry the only way to do that is to increase the amount of honey ... and that results in more alcohol. That said, I guess I have no idea (my ignorance) how someone can produce a mead of 5 %ABV that has any flavor. They must be adding flavor artificially: five percent ABV is about 1 lb of honey in a gallon of water. And a pound of honey is about a cup, isn't it?

 

[seth8530]

Ahh, but the thing is these guys have plenty of flavor and have won multiple awards in dry catagoris in the Mazer's Cup this way.

There are plenty of dryish beers that are low gravity but still have quite a bit of malt flavor.

I'm just not 100% sold on the idea that you really need a lot of honey to get the flavor. So, on one end of the extreme, if you fermented a gallon of water with an ounce of honey, I doubt it would have much in there from the honey at the end of the day.

However, I don't think that the aromatics in honey are necessarily tied up in the sugars inside of it. What I imagine happens is that as you ferment you produce yeast created aromatics. So, I bet the way the pull off there meads at low ABV is finding a good ballance point where the yeast character contributes to, but does not over power the honey character.

This likely means good nutrient, a neutral or complimentary yeast stain, and temperature control.

 

[BernardSmith]

Again, You make really good points , Seth... and you got me thinking whether the secret is in the honey itself? I can imagine some hives producing honey with flowers that are incredibly flavorful and other hives working with nominally similar flowers producing far less flavor-full honey and far less aromatic honey because the pollen is of a different quality. I guess I assumed that all honey from a single floral type would taste pretty much the same but when I think about it it seems reasonable that some sources of say , orange blossom or white sage or meadowfoam pollen may be mediocre in flavor quality and some sources may be superlative and you may need far less of the superlative quality than you need of the mediocre quality...

 

[seth8530]

Again, You make really good points , Seth... and you got me thinking whether the secret is in the honey itself? I can imagine some hives producing honey with flowers that are incredibly flavorful and other hives working with nominally similar flowers producing far less flavor-full honey and far less aromatic honey because the pollen is of a different quality. I guess I assumed that all honey from a single floral type would taste pretty much the same but when I think about it it seems reasonable that some sources of say , orange blossom or white sage or meadowfoam pollen may be mediocre in flavor quality and some sources may be superlative and you may need far less of the superlative quality than you need of the mediocre quality...

Right, or even different types of honey are much more intense than others. I think I can pretty much assure you that something that is 5% ABV made from straight buckwheat and is dry is going to still taste quite a bit like horse manure.


To be honest, I am kind of projecting a project that I have been wanting to try out myself onto you. I was inspired by the nektar creek meads to try and make my own low abv dry mead. ( no kegging needed).

 

[BernardSmith]

Buckwheat - arghhh I tried to make a buckwheat mead about 20 years ago - my first mead - and I shied away from mead until about 2 years ago because of that experience. Horse manure is a very positive description for what I recall it tasted like..... But to the point - I guess I cannot see how such a low ABV - and so how such little honey - and so such little flavor can produce a rich flavor experience. I believe you when you say that someone was able to do it and indeed was applauded by the Mazer Cup Competition for their mead.... but such a low ABV and if brut then there could not be any unfermented honey to boost the flavor. It's either magic or a trick - Flavored glass ware, perhaps: Five % ABV is a scant 1 lb of honey in a gallon of water - a dilution of 1:8. I think a dilution of 1:4 is pushing it...A dilution of 1 in 8 reminds me of the joke about the poor peddler who stands dejected when his horse dies just when he manages to get it down to eating two ears of hay a day...

 

[BernardSmith]

Seth, I wonder if the hydromels you tasted in fact had other ingredients added... say ginger or the like. Not true hydromels then but could adjuncts (as it were) help explain the flavor richness with the low ABV? Do you recall the name of the mead and the meadery?

 

[seth8530]

Nektar creak up in Oregon. Some of them have things like ginger added to them others do not. But they all have a distinct honey flavor to them. Honestly, I guess the end all solution wouLd be to make one myself.

 

[BernardSmith]

You are a natural scientist and I am a social scientist and I guess we both agree that the only answers are found in the world itself - we gotta suck it and see... Your posts have got me wanting to make an hydromel or two using one pound of honey in a gallon of water to see how much flavor is evident. I have several yeasts I might try and I have some varietals of honey... This may be my project for the academic year 2015-16 (beginning a few months before the start of the year). The question: can an hydromel with an ABV of about 5 or 6 % offer real taste?

 

[seth8530]

Yeah, I think it would be a good experiment to do. I can see it being approached one of two ways. Method one, you use a super clean yeast with a cool temperature controlled fermentation utilizing high grade honey and nutrient scheduling all in an effort to try and express the honey as purely as possible.

Or perhaps a second method where you use a yeast strain to produce complimentary flavors that would accent the honey.

 

[BernardSmith]

There is a third option which may be the one B Nektar appears to use (at least as offered by members of another mead making forum ) and that is that they add herbs and spices and it may be those additives that enhance the flavor. Anyway, your posts have got me wanting to try my hand at a low gravity mead. And I think what I will do is make one batch using 1 lb of a varietal honey (sage , perhaps) and add some gruit herbs to the water