This brew is based on an extract kit beer, Northern Brewer’s The Plinian Legacy. It’s intended to turn into another hoppy braggot, though a bit less honey-forward this time, and with a more complex hop profile.

Ingredients in this batch

2016-10-19_19_35_34
Specialty grains for Pliny the Braggot.

I'm giving up entirely on BeerXML on this recipe, as Brewtarget apparently has no way to represent some of the hopping procedures these directions call for.

Procedure

Brew day: 19 October 2016

Original gravity: 1.064 (treating it as if the O.G. were 1.122 due to later honey additions).
Final gravity: 1.028
Estimated ABV: approx. 13%

Yield:

  • 47 x 12 oz. bottles
  • 1 x 22 oz. bottle
  • a hydrometer tube
  • an unfortunately unmeasurable amount spilled from the filling hose

Total Yield: 4⅔ gallons, plus whatever was spilled.

Sanitized, sanitized, sanitized. Filtered two and a half gallons of distilled water into the boil pot and turned on the flame. Added the Carapils and Carastan grains in a brewing bag, then pulled the grains out at 180°F (higher than in the Northern Brewer directions by 10°F) and tossed them. When the water boiled, stirred in the liquid malt extract and the dried malt extract (despite the fact that the Northern Brewer directions don't call for that until near the end of the boil). Returned the wort to boiling, then boiled for ninety minutes, adding hops according to the schedule above. Meanwhile, filtered two more gallons of water and put them into the fermentation bucket containing the lees from batch 026.

At flame-out, added 12 oz. of corn sugar and the hop-rest hops. Chilled the wort using an immersion chiller and poured in the gallon of water from the freezer (which really brought the temperature down quickly at the end; I suspect that pouring it in at the end was a better move than pouring it in at the beginning, because the immersion chiller gets less efficient as the wort cools). Poured the wort into the fermentation bucket, then poured in enough water to bring the volume to 5¼ gallons, filtering out hop matter along the the way. (Jesus, such a lot of hop matter in this batch.) Took a gravity reading, stirred the wort very vigorously to aerate it, sealed the fermenter, shook the fermenter to aerate it some more, and put a blowoff hose in the lid, putting the other end in water.

Further procedure

On 26 October 2016, added 3 lb. 5.9 oz. new honey and 1 lb. 13.3 oz. agave syrup to the wort. Visible carbon dioxide discharge restarted within several hours. On 30 October, fermentation had slowed down, and I swapped out the blowoff hose for an airlock. On 3 November, added another 3 lb. honey and swapped in a blowoff hose, just in case. The blowoff hose wound up being not particularly necessary after the first half-day or so, so I swapped an airlock back in on 6 November. Dry-hop addition #1 occurred on 23 November; dry-hop addition #2 occurred on 4 December (gravity on 4 Dec was 1.027).

Observations

  • 2016-10-20T10:48: There's carbon dioxide discharge from the bucket.
  • 2016-10-23T19:11: There's no longer visible carbon dioxide discharge from the blowoff hose.
  • 2016-10-26T18:48: Gravity at this point is 1.021. Added honey and agave syrup to the bucket, as described above.
  • 2016-10-27T01:48: There is clearly carbon dioxide being discharged again from the bucket.
  • 2016-10-30T20:03: Removed the blowoff hose and put in an airlock.
  • 2016-11-03T18:16: Added another three pounds of honey to the bucket. Swapped out the airlock for a blowoff hose, just to be sure, in case things really take off.
  • 2016-11-07T14:00: Swapped the blowoff hose back out for an airlock.
  • 2016-11-23T20:00: Added dry-hop addition #1 to the bucket.
  • 2016-12-04T20:00: Added dry-hop addition #2 to the bucket.
  • 2016-12-12T19:45: Bottled, yielding about 4⅔ gallons of braggot.
  • 2017-01-11: This is kind of delicious: it's malty and very sweet (well, look at that F.G.). The hops are there, but unlike in Russian River's Pliny the Elder, the hops really move into the background here, though they're still very much present. This barely carbonated at all: I think that the yeast had hit its alcohol tolerance by the time we primed it. In retrospect, this brew might be even better served by finishing it off with a wine yeast: 1116, maybe. Next time I'll try that.