I don’t know about you, but I love honey! Especially the organic kind, not the stuff you get in stores. Honey beer can be especially delicious as well. But what is Honey Beer called?
And isn’t honey beer just mead?
Honey beer is a mixture of two ingredients: Honey and barley malt. A mixture of up to 50% malt to honey is called a Braggot. Honey added to a beer boil in small amounts is considered and adjunct, or an additional ingredient to increase fermentable sugars. It usually does not affect taste.
Braggots are delicious and can be hard to find locally. As pure organic honey prices increase, mead is also increasing in cost. So why not mix honey and malt to make an affordable and delicious brew?
Homebrewing a Braggot vs Adding Honey to Beer
Home brewing a Braggot can be tricky, you have to balance the flavor of the barley malt with honey. Honey is light in flavor and can be overpowered by malt, so its important to choose malts that won’t overpower the honey.
This makes just adding honey to beer almost pointless, you are essentially just increasing the alcohol content of the beer without imparting any of the subtle honey flavor.
If you try adding honey to any of the darker beers you can forget about tasting any honey at all. Don’t get drawn in by fancy names of dark beers saying they have infused a honey taste.
Its not the same, but you should take note if they call it a Braggot!
Why Adding Honey to Boiling Wort is Pointless
You don’t want to boil honey. Its also bad when making mead. Contrary to popular belief honey does not contain many microorganisms so you don’t need to worry about your brew getting infected.
In fact you can just add honey to spring water add some yeast and have mead in half a year.
But, when you add honey to wort that is in a boil, you lose the compounds that give honey its distinct flavor. So when you do this you are just adding fermentable sugar that will 100% be devoured by the yeast.
Not very cost effective if you ask me…
Making a Braggot on the other hand uses large amounts of honey and does not directly get added to the boil.
For more information on how sugar works in a wort boil, check out my article here.
Mixing Beer and Mead Vs Fermenting Together
You could technically mix a finished beer and a finished mead together to create a Braggot. The actual definition has a bit of leeway, as its not clearly defined.
While you could get something closely resembling a Braggot by mixing two pure fermentations, it really just tastes more like a cocktail mixture than anything.
It dilutes the individual flavors of both the mead and the beer.
If you are going to mix the two together I would suggest choosing a light beer. A beer that might work well with this is a Belgian Tripel, since its already light in body.
To truly get the experience of a Braggot its much better to mix together the ingredients prior to fermentation. This will meld the flavors together much better creating a more unique experience.
Hop Choice in a Braggot
Honey typically ferments extremely dry. So countering the sweetness of a Braggot may not be as difficult as you would think.
Make sure you keep your hop balance in line with the amount of malt you are using…
It makes no sense to add 5 oz of hops to a Braggot with only a pound or two of malt.
Having said that, if you want to make a hoppy Braggot, you most certainly can. At these stages, Braggots are new and experimental so explore to your hearts content.
Maybe you can even make a new style of Braggot!
Keep hop flavors in Balance
I would not suggest finding the most aromatic and fruit flavor hops you can find. Remember a Braggot is about the subtle honey and sweet malt flavors.
A simple cheap bittering hop like centennial or cascade are perfect to add to your Braggot.
Or really anything that is inexpensive… its being added to the beginning of the boil after all.
When it comes to Braggots you might try to experiment with whirlpooling the hops, but I’ll leave that to your discretion since there is little to no information online about it.
I’ll be sure to experiment with that in the future!
Grain Choice for a Braggot
Honey malt is a great choice for a Braggot. Since the honey malt will compliment the honey in the mead portion of a Braggot.
You will want to stay away from overly intense barley though, since this will overpower the honey. Honey has a subtle flavor and you want to keep that flavor intact.
So make sure you are not creating a malt bomb with tons of different malts, but rather keep it simple.
Typically malt choices should be lighter in color and flavor to make an exceptional Braggot, but craft brewing is pushing experimentation to its limits and some dark Braggots are becoming more popular.
Just google Honey Brown and you will see what I mean.
You could even try using dark or chocolate malts in your Braggot, just make sure to balance the flavor profile and use small portions of malt compared to your honey.
Extract Brewers can Diversify Flavor
Extract brewers don’t have to be afraid of brewing a Braggot, you can actually brew with extract like you normally would and then add the honey.
Make sure that you formulate the grist profile, or in this case extract and honey percentage, to balance the honey and extract flavor.
Make sure you don’t use too much extract though, just a small amount of extract can go a long way when it comes to making a Braggot.
As a rule of thumb any extract beer recipe you make just cut the extract quantity in half or more.
Remember you don’t need to have a ton of malt to create a Braggot, just a little will do the trick. Its more about retaining the honey characteristics, while creating a more robust flavor from barley malt.
Yeast in a Braggot
Yeast choice in Braggots is open to experimentation. Since most mead is made with wine yeast and beer with ale yeast its a bit confusing.
One consideration is alcohol content, your Braggot will most likely be higher in alcohol than a normal ale so a yeast that can handle these higher percentages is a must.
Another consideration is how you decide to store your Braggot concoction. If you have a chest fridge you have more options but if you just have a cool dark closer you options are a bit more limited.
One yeast that is popular with Braggots for its temperature and alcohol tolerance is Kveik.
You can store it just about anywhere and be OK.
If you want to experiment with some interesting beer yeasts I wrote an article about beer yeast in mead here.
Nutrient and Fermentation
Since wort has way more nutrients in it than just honey and water yeast nutrient is not really necessary.
Fermentation is simple too. It does not take nearly as long as a normal mead does.
A normal mead using wine yeast takes about 6 months minimum but could be sped up with beer yeast to around 3 months. A Braggot using ale yeast will take about a month to be ready, before carbonation.
Easy Next Step For Homebrewers and Mead Makers
Whether or not you like the simplicity of meadmaking, or the easy time commitment of extract brewing making a Braggot is the obvious next step in complexity.
Check out my recommended products page for an easy mead-making and small batch beer kit.
You don’t have to jump into all-grain brewing to make a great Braggot, simply because they are so rare. So take the next step and brew your very own Braggot
I’m sure it will taste great!