Friday, June 11, 2010

Dead Bunny Braggot revisted


This was my very first attempt at a braggot. What could go wrong did. Mostly in part to my lack of brewing experience and knowing that hop utilization was dependent on heat. That mess there was when I put the hops in with the wort and the yeast and hoped for the best. This was a batch that fermented out at 10% abv and then I added champagne yeast to see about getting the abv up just a little higher, because better judgement seems to fly out the window when experimentation with alcoholic beverage comes into play. I managed to get 18 bottles out of the 2 gallons. I also learned a very important lesson about priming sugar...boil it. For some reason that little bit of information slipped my mind. Do you know what happens when you just dump priming sugar into a bottling bucket, add braggot, then bottle.

Nothing.

I never gave any of these away because after a month I opened a bottle and surprise surprise, no carbonation. I had a perfectly still braggot, which is no big deal because they can be still. It wasn't the stillness that was a problem, it was the fact that it had so much alcohol my mouth burned. Thankfully, there was enough residual sweetness to make that bearable. I drank the whole bottle and was pretty well feeling the same intoxication level I would feel had I drank 4 beers.

Why this trip down memory lane? Well I was flipping through my recipe book and thinking I would like to try this again with a little more experience under my belt.

My original recipe:

3.3# Wheat Malt
3# Honey
1oz Cascade
1tsp Acid Blend
2tsp yeast nutrient
London Ale yeast

This new recipe will be a little less aggressive on the wanting to have a high alcohol. I'm not even shooting for 6% I'll be happy to have a session level alcohol, with nice flavor and drinkability.

I'm thinking something like this:
4 lbs. Wheat Liquid
1 lbs. Oats Flaked
6 lbs. Honey
1 oz. Cascade (Whole, 5.50 %AA) boiled 60 minutes.
1 oz. Willamette (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 30 minutes.
.5 oz. Willamette (Whole, 5.00 %AA) boiled 10 minutes.
2 tsp Yeast Nutrient (AKA Fermax) (not included in calculations)
Yeast: WYeast 1028 London Ale

The AA% is a general estimation from the recipe program I use. This one would be a 5 gallon batch. I'm posting my recipe on a homebrew site for some advice from more experienced mead makers.

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