What yeast should I use? Wine or Ale? If I use Ale yeast the Attenuation level will leave behind a rather sweet beverage. Plus what do I have to do to bottle condition this with the high FG?
Basically looking for a yeast that will do an attenuation level right around 80%.
Don't forget that the honey is much more fermentable than the malt. If you do 50/50 by weight, you'll have half the residual sugars you would have with just malt.
If you are shooting for 10% ABV or higher, wine yeast makes the most sense.
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Remember one unassailable statistic, as explained by the late, great George Carlin: "Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!"
Don't forget that the honey is much more fermentable than the malt. If you do 50/50 by weight, you'll have half the residual sugars you would have with just malt.
If you are shooting for 10% ABV or higher, wine yeast makes the most sense.
Thanks for answering one of the questions. What a minute you didn't answer any of them.
Dayum someone's snarky... I hope you two know each other!
I've always guessed ale, since it's technically more on the ale side than the mead side. Here's a link supporting that theory. Wyeast 1764 http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/braggot-recipe-advice-129219/
Well it also depends on what temp you are mashing at, so that will determine how many fermentables and unfermentables you will have. Also it depends what type of character you are looking for from your yeast.
FWIW Ken Schramm's book on meadmaking recommends using wine yeast for making braggots. Alternatively you could use a highly alcoholic tolerant ale yeast that matches the flavor profile you're going for and add a wine yeast for carbonating.
FWIW Ken Schramm's book on meadmaking recommends using wine yeast for making braggots. Alternatively you could use a highly alcoholic tolerant ale yeast that matches the flavor profile you're going for and add a wine yeast for carbonating.
Just my $.02
S-33 strain is a good example of such an ale yeast...it'll hit 13% ABV as long as you give it plenty of nutrient and especially energizer from the beginning. It'll take a good 4 weeks to do that though, but it does yield a tastey mead that's often on the sweet side since this strain really cannot exceed 14% even if everything is perfectly executed.
__________________ Malkore
On tap: Camelot Ale, Lancelot's Wheat, English Brown Ale, Steam Beer, HoovNuts IPA
Bottled: MOAM, Braggot, Raspberry Melomel, Merlot, Apfelwein, Pyment, Sweet mead, Cabernet
Primary -
Secondary - Vanilla mead
Gal in 2009: 27
Gal in 2010: 34
Gal in 2011: 13
Gal in 2012: ~
I used D47 for my first braggot, just because it seems to agree so much with honey fermentations. Wound up tasting like some sort of Belgian ale, but I used a fair bit of wheat in it which might have had something to do with it. I was surprised how ale like it wound up, actually. I'll try my next batch without the wheat malt and an ale yeast, to get the taste of the hops more into the front, and to see how the different yeast fares.
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