Since our last humblebraggot 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 upping the amount of honey and using honey from different fruit varietal sources: roughly half of the honey is orange blossom, and half is blackberry. It should be pretty tasty.

BeerXML for this recipe, generated by BrewTarget.

I'm calling this batch Humblebraggot II, thanks to a suggestion from Xenia's friend Melissa about the name for the original Humblebraggot.

Ingredients

  • 4 lb. Briess Pilsen Malt.
  • 4 lb. Briess Pale Ale Malt.
  • 2 lb. Briess Goldpils Vienna Malt.
  • 1 lb. Briess Carapils Mal.t
  • 6 lb., 1.6 oz. orange blossom honey from Bennett's Honey Farm.
  • 7 lb., 8.3 oz. blackberry blossom honey from Bennett's Honey Farm.
  • 3.4 oz. Hallertau hops (4.0% A.A.) at 90 min.
  • 3 oz. Cascade hops (7.6% A.A.) at 90 min.
  • 1 oz. Cascade hops (7.6% A.A.) at 30 min.
  • 1 oz. Cascade hops (7.6% A.A.) at 15 min.
  • 1 oz. Cascade hops (7.6% A.A.) at 2 min.
  • 1 tsp. Wyeast Beer Nutrient.</a>
  • 1 pouch Lalvin D-47 wine yeast, rehydrated in ⅔ c. tap water at 95℉.
  • Priming sugar at bottling, 3 Nov. 2023:
    • ¾ cup white table sugar

Procedure

Treated ten gallons of tap water with gypsum and Campden tablets, then allowed it to sit for twenty minutes before dacanting off of the resulting mineral salts at the bottom.

Heated ~7.5 gallons of dechlorinated water to 177℉ in the electric boil kettle, then poured it over the mash bag and grains, bringing the mash temperature to 154℉. Moved the pot out of the way, covered it with a lid, and wrapped the pot in a sleeping bag. Mashed for 90, during which time the mash temperature fell to 144℉! Yeesh. Moved the wort to the electric boil kettle.

Started heating the wort, adding the first three ounces of hops at 180℉ instead of at the beginning of the boil. Boiled for 90 minutes, not starting the count until a full boil had been reached and the hot break had occurred. Added new hops at 90, 60, 30, 15, and 2 minutes, sanitizing the immersion chiller by inserting it during the last fifteen minutes of the boil. Added honey at flameout, then chilled, then moved the wort from the large brew pot into a bucket, filtering it through the large sieve to catch hop trub. Agitated by stirring with the large brewing spoon.

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

Brew day: 23 August 2023
Predicted original gravity: 1.1457
Measured original gravity: 1.143
Estimated IBUs: 67.1
Predicted final gravity 1.0219
Predicted ABV: 16.9
Bottling day : 3 November 2023
Final gravity: 1.042
Estimated ABV: 16.0%

Yield:

  • 19 x 12 oz. beer bottles
  • 3 x 500mL swing-top beer bottles
  • 3 x 500mL beer bottles
  • 1 x 650mL beer bottles
  • 8 x 22 oz. beer bottles
  • 1 x 10 oz. hydrometer tube

Total yield: approx. 537 fl. oz., or 4.2 gal.

Observations

  • 2023-11-03: Bottled, using green bottle caps, yielding approx. 4.2 gal. of braggot.