Left over Braggot

[Spohaw]

Hello everyone

I had some grain left over from a can brew so I decided to make a small 10ltr brew with it and honey
ended up adding some leftover dextrose and table sugar to bring the alc content up . I used some left over saaz pellets as well as some us05 saved from another brew

I was just calling it left over ale until I read something about Braggot so I have been calling it a braggot ever since

I had to store it in a water container in the fridge until I had a free fermenter which was around a week , the water container didnt have a lid so I just put some cling wrap over it ....
I decided to boil it again for 20 odd mins on the day I chucked the yeast in just to try and kill anything bad in there , reduced the brew to around 9.5ltrs

Had it in the fermenter for 4 weeks at around 18-20 degrees and has only been the bottle for 2 weeks today

My first beer from scratch

Left over ale - 10 litre batch

710gm Honey
610gm of light caramel malt ebc 20-40
320gm of crystal malt ebc 115-145
330gm of dextrose
200gm of table sugar

18gm of saaz

Us05 yeast

used a biab bag for the mash , got water to around 66ish degrees c and wrapped it up for 90 mins checking every 20 to 30 minutes and if it was dropping in temp I just lifted the bag up and turned the burner back on until the temp came back up

Boiled it up for 60 minutes with 18gm of saaz pellets and the honey and sugars

Had a bottle today and it has some kick and is very easy to drink and it hasnt got an over powering honey flavour like I thought it would ....seems like a nice winter drink

Ill try my best to have another bottle tomorrow and take a picture of it ....... she isnt very clear though

Cheers Spohaw

 

[Spohaw]

Here it is ... got next to no head and could use more body imo , it seems a bit thin

Will do this one again but with more grain , maybe a base malt ??......the saaz is nice in it so ill keep that

Cheers Spohaw

 

[Airgead]

Yeah... will need a base malt. What you have there is some mead with some steeping grains. That will give it some malt/caramel flavour and some colour but won't give it much else.

For a braggot you want around 40-60% of the fermentables to come from grain. Mine are usually 50/50 honey/malt. A good base malt (I like ale malt with maybe some munich as well) plus some caramel malts works really nicely.

I usually do a weak AG brew (1.030 or so) and make up to the full strength (1.060 ish) with honey.

if you are extract brewing then use 50/50 honey and malt extract with some steeping grains as desired.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Spohaw]

Cheers for the advice Airgear , everyone that tried the braggot liked it ....I even had one person try and buy some ...... obviously I declined , that would be illegal (I had none left anyway)

Like Airgear said it was basically a mead with some steeping grains and hops ..... this time I wanted to try and get it in the middle so it could be described as either a mead with grains or a beer with honey and still be accurate

I tried to do make it so it was roughly 2kg grains and 2 kg honey with sugars

Was a small batch again ,16ltrs , and I made it a little bit weaker this time , I took my time getting this one down to an acceptable pitching temp (around 25, I think) , I had to go to work for 4hrs so I just left the pot in the sink full of cold water and put the lid on

I pressed the option for No Chill Adjusted for this recipe because as far as I can work out no chill is when it takes a while for the wort to chill to pitching temp compared with chilling to correct temp in just a few minutes

here is the recipe .... its for a 15 liter brew

2nd Try Braggot (Braggot)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.075 (°P): 18.2
Final Gravity (FG): 1.007 (°P): 1.8
Alcohol (ABV): 8.88 %
Colour (SRM): 12.3 (EBC): 24.3
Bitterness (IBU): 18.8 (Average - No Chill Adjusted)

29.34% Honey .............. 1.2kg
25.23% Pale Ale Malt .......1.032kg
16.33% Caramel Light Malt...........668gm
9.78% Cane Sugar...........400gm
11.98% Dextrose.............490gm
7.33% Crystal 60...........300gm

2.3 g/L (35gm) Saaz (3.3% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil)

0.1 g/L Yeast Nutrient @ 10 Minutes (Boil) half a teaspoon
0.0 g/L Whirlfloc Tablet @ 5 Minutes (Boil) half a tablet

Step Infusion at 66°C for First step 90 Minutes , Second step at 70°C for 30 Mintues (like a long batch sparge) . Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented with US-05 yeast

Notes: FG 1086 @ 28-30 deg c , watered down with another liter to get 1.072 at 30 deg c
pitched yeast 22nd june


Recipe Generated with BrewMate

I hope it tastes as nice as the last one ............ill leave it for another 2 weeks and then ill bottle it

Cheers Spohaw

 

[Spohaw]

Checked SG today and it came up as 1.003 at 15 degs c

Just need to get some bottles now

Cheers Spohaw

 

[NickyJ]

How long are you ageing your braggot for? How'd the 2nd attempt turn out? I'm bottling my first attempt tomorrow, I'll be sure you post the results (and recipe) here if it's halfway decent. Planning to age it for at least 2 months though.

 

[Dunkelbrau]

I'm curious as to why you are adding dex and table sugar?

The honey is 95% fermentable, just up the honey to get it to the required gravity.

 

[Spohaw]

Nicky j .... The second run didn't turn out as good as the first one IMO , flavour wasn't as great and had a slight alc warmth to it but that smoothed out with aging
I ended up kegging this one because it was easier , I sampled it from 1 week in the keg until it finished 2 months later and the Braggot definitely become easier drinking after about the 6 week mark

 

[Spohaw]

Dunkel .. Read some where that adding sugar increases drinkability and also wanted the ABV to be higher without adding more honey or malts

 

[NickyJ]

My first attempt was a failure, I must have fucked up my IBU calculation because it was bitter as hell. I kept a few bottles to see how it would age and the honey character definitely improved into something fantastic after a couple of months if I was to ignore the bitterness. It was also lacking in body and head.

2nd attempt is in the fermenter now, got high hopes for this one. Have added more malt and corn starch for body and head. Again I'm questioning how long I should age it for and if I should age it in the fridge or not. It's going to finish around the 8% mark so I'm thinking it'll need some age to reach it's peak because I'm impatient I'm thinking I'll age it outside the fridge to try to hurry it along.

 

[Spohaw]

Had a 3rd attempt at a Braggot yesterday

I changed up the grain bill a fair bit .....It should have more body and be lighter then the last two

This recipe is for a 17 litre batch
It should end up around the 8% mark ...maybe

3rd try Braggot

Recipe Specs
Original Gravity (OG): 1.072
Bitterness (IBU): 23.2 (Average - No Chill Adjusted)
Boil Time (Minutes): 70

Grain Bill
----------------
2.100 kg Honey (40.62%)
2.000 kg Pale Ale Malt (38.68%)
0.500 kg Unmalted Wheat (9.67%)
0.300 kg Dextrose (5.8%)
0.100 kg Crystal 15 (1.93%)
0.100 kg Munich I (1.93%)
0.070 kg Crystal 90 (1.35%)

Hop Bill
----------------
44.5 g Saaz Pellet (3.6% Alpha) @ 60 Minutes (Boil) (1.9 g/L)


Single step Infusion at 66°C for 60 Minutes.
Long Batch sparge at 70°C for 30 mins
Fermented at 22°C with Safale US-05

Ill ferment it at 22 for 2 days then take it down to 18 for 3 days then ill leave it at 16 for a week then back up to 22 for the last two days
Hopfully it will be brewed out by then


Cheers Spohaw

 

[Spohaw]

Racked it off to a keg last night and the FG was 1.006 ....... wanted more body than that

Ill use a different yeast next time ....

 

[Spohaw]

I'll stop using dextrose as well and up the light crystal and Munich to 300 gm each

 

[NickyJ]

That is a very low FG. I'll have to check my records to see what I've finished with in the past but it is for this reason that I always use some corn syrup in my honey brews

 

[NickyJ]

What's the idea behind lowering and raising your fermentation temperature like that?

 

[Spohaw]

Well Nicky the reason behind the temp changes during fermentation is to have a couple days warmish to get the yeast going then bring it down to ferment clean without any off flavours then warm it back up to 22 for a diacetyl rest at the end

Im probably doing it wrong but haven't been getting any off flavours for a while

It finished out lower than I wanted it to , I'm probably going to make the next one with some more dark crystal , no dextrose , more munich , more caramel and use a different yeast .....maybe a mangrove jacks burton union yeast .....just to see how different it is

Looking at getting an oak barrel soon to ill probably just blend them all together when that turns up
I will need to make another couple batches to fill it ....... so I can have another couple cracks at it

I figure as long as I stick to the same ibu and same variety hops then they should blend ok with out any flavours clashing ....maybe

Ill make a small mix up before putting them all together just to be sure

ill gas up the keg soon to have a sample but its only been in the keg for 5 days now

Cheers Spohaw

 

[Spohaw]

Tested today after 10 weeks in the keg and it has smoothed out great

No harsh alcohol flavour anymore and with that gone it seems well balanced

Ill be sending this one to the WASABC to see what they think...

Cheers

 

[Spohaw]

Drinking nice today

 

[Spohaw]

That Braggot got dead last in the mead category haha

1st attempt Braggot got a 33 and the third attempt got 22

Haha

I think I'll go back to the first recipe and stick to that

 

[barls]

Here's one of the commercial recipes
http://www.thebrewingnetwork.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=10052#_thread
And this is previous discussion
http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/75803-big-dark-braggot/