Brewing a braggot with a friend - Robobrew

fury_tea · Nov 21, 2024

Hi all,

I brew on a 35L Robobrew. Got a mate who likes mead but never brewed beer, he's coming round in a couple of weeks with a load of honey to brew a braggot (mead/beer cross, if you don't know), and i am providing the grain, hops and brewing equipment etc.

We want to end up with around 20L each, but I am unsure on how to do it with my 35L robo.

Grain bill is about 8kg which is a bit more than the robo can handle.

1. Should I split the grain and do a reiterated mash then add water back to it after the boil?
2. Will this mess with the IBUs etc (I've worked it out for 40L)?
3. What's the efficiency like on these kinds of brews and should I add a bit extra malt in case the SG ends up a bit low?
4. Would you add the honey to the fermenter or to the boil at flame out?

Thanks in advance

An Ankoù · Nov 21, 2024

My experience of Braggot is that it's quite strong, 7+% abv. DO you really want 20 litres each? Why not go for 10-15 litres each. It had quite a distinctive flavour, which I love, but you might not even like it. I also bottle mine in 33cl bottles. It improves for keeping several months or even a year.
I add my honey to the end of the boil, bring it back to the boil and then chill. But in retrospect, I don't think it's necessary to bring it back to the boil.

Rwilts · Nov 21, 2024

I think your asking a lot both with the grain bill and the desired volume.

Ignoring the first I would have thought your only option would be to liqueur back after boil but that would still be adding a lot of water into each 20l batch..

As discussed on a different thread last night anything north of 6kg will give you a very thick mash and push the capacity of a 35L boiler . I once did a 7.5 in my brewzilla NEVER AGAIN.

I think your better off just brewing as much as you can and if it works out and you both like it brew it again...

Caramel Ox · Nov 21, 2024

The only question I can answer is that the more you load in the lower your mash efficiency will be - and a brewing calculator won’t account for the change.

My question- does it make a difference to the end result if you blend before fermentation compared to both making your own product and blending later?

fury_tea · Nov 21, 2024

An Ankoù said:
My experience of Braggot is that it's quite strong, 7+% abv. DO you really want 20 litres each? Why not go for 10-15 litres each. It had quite a distinctive flavour, which I love, but you might not even like it. I also bottle mine in 33cl bottles. It improves for keeping several months or even a year.
I add my honey to the end of the boil, bring it back to the boil and then chill. But in retrospect, I don't think it's necessary to bring it back to the boil.

I am aiming for about 8.5%. My plan is to keg it and bottle half from the keg to save for next Christmas then drink the rest whenever I feel like it over the next few months. My friend will be bottling the lot.

I love mead, I like barley wines etc, so I can't see myself not liking it really.

Rwilts said:
I think your asking a lot both with the grain bill and the desired volume.

Ignoring the first I would have thought your only option would be to liqueur back after boil but that would still be adding a lot of water into each 20l batch..

As discussed on a different thread last night anything north of 6kg will give you a very thick mash and push the capacity of a 35L boiler . I once did a 7.5 in my brewzilla NEVER AGAIN.

I think your better off just brewing as much as you can and if it works out and you both like it brew it again...

As it stands the plan in my head is reiterative, i.e. to mash 4-5kg, sparge, then mash the rest in the same wort ton sparge and boil. I know lots of people have done this for things like imperial stouts etc so I know it works but would be interested in hearing from someone who has tried it.

The other option is that I have a tea urn, think it's around 25L, I could use a brew bag and mash in that at the same time, then just mix them. It just means I will have the get my sparge water from elsewhere, and I don't know how well the tea urn boils so could be too much messing around.

fury_tea · Nov 21, 2024

Caramel Ox said:
The only question I can answer is that the more you load in the lower your mash efficiency will be - and a brewing calculator won’t account for the change.

My question- does it make a difference to the end result if you blend before fermentation compared to both making your own product and blending later?

If I have understood the question, I can't answer it, but my friend doesn't have any beer brewing equipment which is why we're doing it round mine.

I did have another idea, which is to do kind of a partial mash, and add DME or LME to bring the SG up...

peterpiper · Nov 28, 2024

fury_tea said:
I did have another idea, which is to do kind of a partial mash, and add DME or LME to bring the SG up...

A braggot sounds like a nice thing to try. When I had bees, i used to do melomel.

And I agree about doing a partial mash, it's much easier than doing a reiterated mash.
Also the 2nd pass, of a reiterated mash, has much lower efficiency due to the higher sugar levels.

Last January, I did 20L of 16.5% Award imperial stout, from my BZ4 35L. So getting 40L suitable for a 8.5% brew, from a 35l system, doesn't sound a big problem.
The stout is now ageing, on split whisky barrel oak staves. Official tasting, and gifts, this Christmas (but it's good already).

I tweaked the recipe, in brewfather, adding 3kg of LME (from TMM), while reducing the base malt, to keep the desired ABV.
Depending on your system efficiency, replace 1kg base malt, with around 0.75kg of liquid malt extract, or 0.6kg of dry malt extract. So when adding 3kg LME, reduce base malt by around 4kg.

As you're wanting 40L, you'd maybe be better off, adding the honey and LME to the FV, rather than the boiler.
Depending on the yeast you're using: for a strong ferment, it can be beneficial to keep the initial SG down. Then start gradually adding the suger/honey once initial vigorous ferment is about over. At around 200g /20L daily.

If you're worried about possible infection, from adding LME to FV at start, instead, add it once fermenting vigerously.
But with malt extract based kits, the LME usually isn't boiled, and they work fine.

fury_tea · Nov 28, 2024

peterpiper said:
A braggot sounds like a nice thing to try. When I had bees, i used to do melomel.

And I agree about doing a partial mash, it's much easier than doing a reiterated mash.
Also the 2nd pass, of a reiterated mash, has much lower efficiency due to the higher sugar levels.

Last January, I did 20L of 16.5% Award imperial stout, from my BZ4 35L. So getting 40L suitable for a 8.5% brew, from a 35l system, doesn't sound a big problem.
The stout is now ageing, on split whisky barrel oak staves. Official tasting, and gifts, this Christmas (but it's good already).

I tweaked the recipe, in brewfather, adding 3kg of LME (from TMM), while reducing the base malt, to keep the desired ABV.
Depending on your system efficiency, replace 1kg base malt, with around 0.75kg of liquid malt extract, or 0.6kg of dry malt extract. So when adding 3kg LME, reduce base malt by around 4kg.

As you're wanting 40L, you'd maybe be better off, adding the honey and LME to the FV, rather than the boiler.
Depending on the yeast you're using: for a strong ferment, it can be beneficial to keep the initial SG down. Then start gradually adding the suger/honey once initial vigorous ferment is about over. At around 200g /20L daily.

If you're worried about possible infection, from adding LME to FV at start, instead, add it once fermenting vigerously.
But with malt extract based kits, the LME usually isn't boiled, and they work fine.

Thanks for the advice, yeah I like doing mead , had some nice successes, and also some fails. I have decided upon a partial mash with this, I have 1.5kg of LME in stock so I just adjusted the base malt until I was in the same same ballpark and now I have a bit of wiggle room in the kettle.

I was thinking I will add some of the honey to the kettle post boil but keep half until after high krausen. I have a nice buckwheat honey so will add that to the fermenter on day 5 or something.

Wish me luck!

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