Since our first braggot was so delicious, we wanted to produce another one based on the same recipe—that's Ken Schramm's Hefty Braggot in chapter 12 of The Compleat Meadmaker. This time, we're brewing it all-grain, keeping the hops at the recommended levels, and upping the honey a little bit, and using honey from fruit varietal sources: half of the honey is orange blossom, and half is raspberry. It should be pretty tasty.

BeerXML for this recipe, generated by BrewTarget.

I'm calling this batch Humblebraggot, thanks to a suggestion from Xenia's friend Melissa.

Ingredients

  • 4 lb. German Pilsner (2 Row) malt
  • 4 lb. German Pale Malt (2 Row)
  • 2 lb. German Vienna malt
  • 1 lb. Cara-Pils/Dextrine malt
  • 5 lb. raspberry honey, obtained from a honey buy through Queen Bee Brews
  • 5 lb. orange blossom honey from Bennett's Honey Farm
  • 3 oz. Cascade hops (7.1% A.A.) at 60 min
  • 1 oz. Cascade hops (7.1% A.A.) at 30 min
  • 1 oz. Cascade hops (7.1% A.A.) at 2 min
  • 1 tsp. Wyeast beer yeast nutrient
  • 1 pounch (5g) Lalvin D-47, rehydrated in ⅔ cup untreated tap water at 95℉
  • 3½ oz. cane sugar for priming, dissolved in two cups of heated fermented braggot and added into the bottling bucked before the braggot is racked into it, on 5 December 2018

Procedure

Heated three gallons of dechlorinated water to 180℉ in the smaller five-gallon brew pot, then pushed the mash bag and grains into it, bringing the mash temperature to 155℉. Moved the pot out of the way, covered it with a lid, and wrapped the pot in a sleeping bag. Mashed for an hour, during which time the mash temperature fell to 152℉. Lifted the brew bag out of the pot and transferred the bag to the large brew pot. Recirculated the wort that had already been collected, then sparged with a gallon and a half of water at 180℉, yielding three gallons of wort for the partial boil at a gravity of 1.087.

Started heating the wort, adding the first three ounces of hops at 180℉ instead of at the beginning of the boil. Boiled for an hour, not starting the count until a full boil had been reached. Added new hops at 30 and 2 minutes, sanitizing the immersion chiller by inserting it during the last fifteen minutes. Added honey at flameout, then moved the wort from the large brew pot into a bucket already containing two and a half gallons of dechlorinated water, filtering it through the large sieve to catch hop trub. Agitated by stirring with the large brewing spoon.

Pitched rehydrated Lalvin D-47 at 88℉, then covered and popped in an airlock.

Brew day: 16 September 2018
Predicted original gravity: 1.128
Measured original gravity: 1.118
Estimated IBUs: 46.8
Predicted final gravity 1.019
Predicted ABV: 14.2%

Bottling day : 5 December 2018
Final gravity: 1.032
Calculated ABV: about 13%

Yield:

  • 33 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 4 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 3 x 500 mL beer bottles
  • 1 x 750 mL beer bottle

Total yield: about 560 fluid ounces, or just over 4⅜ gallons.

Observations

  • 2018-11-04T17:00:00: Racked off of the yeast and into a new bucket.
  • 2018-12-05T18:30: Bottled, yielding not quite four and a half gallons of 13% braggot.