Inspired by historic braggot recipes I've been wondering about making a braggot, which in modern times is a mead made with malt, and in medieval times seems to be an ale back sweetened with honey. Instead of making a second run malt, I decided to add the honey must straight to the wort and see what happens... For period sake, I used ale lees saved from a previous batch and had the fermenter hang out in front of the woodstove for a few days. It's 48 hours later now, the yeasts have awoken and are doing their thing, and the must/wort smells absolutely wonderful!
The spent grains, which would indeed make for a wonderful animal snack... too bad!
I used 7.5 pounds of honey in 2 1/2 gallons of water, to stay in line with the 2 1/2 gallon ale recipe. I did not boil the honey, or scum much as it was quite clean, but I did heat it to 120 degrees F to help break down the honey sugars for the yeast to get a quick start.
After mixing the wort (grains) and must (diluted honey) real well, I added my yeast:
A ziplock baggie from the freezer full of lees from a previous apple cider. Apple is a fairly mellow taste, which should not much interfere with the grain taste, if at all. I did not add any raisins (yeast supplement) or black tea (tannin) as I normally would with mead, as I feel like the grains most likely has plenty to spare. We'll find out...
Happily warming up in front of our woodstove. It does not have an airlock as of yet as it needs daily stirring anyway, and I ran out of lids with stopper holes... this weekend it will be upgraded, but as an interesting side benefit it was useful to be able to clearly see the lid buckle up from pressure built up of the second-hand yeast doing it's thing. Yay!
Very good! Keep us posted!
ReplyDeleteWhat I like the most is that is an example of project diary documentation. You're doing this as it should be done.
Keep up the good work.