Hefty Braggot

[Airgead]

I will have to brew Daves recipe and he will have to brew this one then we can compare. If you raise your total malt+wheat contribution up to 4.5kg to 5kg Dave, what do you think will happen to the honey contribution with that recipe?

I can get at recipes on google for old braggot recipe that claim British origin with a higher honey component than the malt component, so it seems all over the shop.

Cheers,
Brewer Pete

Historically, 'styles' were more vague descriptions than anything the BJCP would recognise. There were no prescribed strengths for anything (I'm not even sure they had a way of measuring ABV back then). Adulteration and watering were rife.

My general impression of Braggots is that anything that has a significant fraction of its fermentables from honey is a braggot regardless of strength. I would say that a significant fraction is anything over 10% (ie: more than you would use of a speciality grain). Below that and its a honey flavoured beer (bees knees anyone?). I generally brew them at 40-50% from honey. I have done up to 60%.

I'm brewing a batch of braggot in the next couple of weeks (as soon as I have a free fermenter). Lets arrange a bottle swap.

Cheers
Dave

 

[pdilley]

Historically, 'styles' were more vague descriptions than anything the BJCP would recognise. There were no prescribed strengths for anything (I'm not even sure they had a way of measuring ABV back then). Adulteration and watering were rife.

My general impression of Braggots is that anything that has a significant fraction of its fermentables from honey is a braggot regardless of strength. I would say that a significant fraction is anything over 10% (ie: more than you would use of a speciality grain). Below that and its a honey flavoured beer (bees knees anyone?). I generally brew them at 40-50% from honey. I have done up to 60%.

I'm brewing a batch of braggot in the next couple of weeks (as soon as I have a free fermenter). Lets arrange a bottle swap.

Cheers
Dave

See the Blueberry Braggot post as I might be starting that in a few weeks if the group brew thinks its ok since they are all Northern Hemisphere brewers. If not we can pick a style. Would like to get an AHB group brew going on one of these recipes as it would be great to compare and contrast how each of us fared with a single recipe.

I have found a 13th century velum from England with a Mead recipe. Since I know some German and some Norse I can read it easily but it might be difficult for a modern English speaker (thank the French for that). Even more so I found a good history of Honey that crosses into religion and cultures and references at least back 4,000 years. Meads are supposed to be 8,000+ years of brewing history.

I also got some African Mead recipes from Ethiopia, but you might not like the fact they still use Wild Airborne yeast fermentation But there has to be a crossover point from wild yeast to cultivated yeast and I think I'll have to learn a little Babylonian Cuneiform or some Hieroglyphics to get any really old recipes past what we have today which are still quite modern in the span of 8,000 years of history with the beverage.

Check the history post, I really enjoyed reading it!


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Pumpy]

I am just going to wait until Brewer Pete has finished his good posts ,then I am going to print it all off sit in bed and read it all get me some honey, the French lady next door is nice and make some mead

If he ever stops :unsure:

Pumpy

 

[pdilley]

For those who would like to know just how many litres of honey will be the same as 9 pounds, I've been working on my Mead Master Brewing program a little more and have my honeyscale engine up and going.

I also have a more accurate pounds to kilograms engine, so 9# = 4.08233133 kg. So I should have really made it 4.08kg but the .01kg isn't going to do much.

In [18]: '%.2f' % (honeyscales.pounds_to_litres(9))
Out[18]: '2.86'

In [19]: '%.2f' % (honeyscales.kilograms_to_litres(4.08233133))
Out[19]: '2.86'

Both are sanity-checking each other so 2.86 Litres of honey will be the equivalent of 9 US Pounds of honey.

I'll wrap the entire program in a nice GUI that runs on all computers, Macs, Windows, Linux if I don't pull my hair out first. Cross-platform programs are a pain, each system decides to screw up on different pieces... grrr...


Cheers,
Brewer Pete

 

[Feral Shane]

MMMMMM Mead now I want to track down the my local apiarist and steal all his honey and put it to good use.