Blueberry Braggot?

Hello,
I have 10 lbs of blueberries and I want to ferment them into some delicious. I found a mead recipe that I like but I want to make some substitutions for pale malt extract to round out the mead. I have limited experience with mead so I was wondering if you guys could give me some suggestions. I was thinking I would cut out the sugar for malt and perhaps some of the honey. Is there a known malt to honey ratio that gives it a nice balance of the two??? I think I would like it to be pretty malty.

here is the recipe I was starting with, but I am open to others if anyone has one.

6.5 gallons
Ingredients
10 lbs honey
7 - 10 lbs fresh blueberries
1 - 2 lbs corn sugar
1 - 2 oz hops (Cascades is fine)
lemon grass tea (optional)
yeastMethods/steps
Boil the honey, sugar, and hops for at least an hour (although boiling honey is not favored by most digest subscribers, it works fine and is the method used by Papazian).
Clean berries and mash well.

Put mashed berries, hot must, and enough water to make 6.5 gallons in a fermenter, before pitching yeast.

Thanks!

After one week, strain out berries and rack to secondary.

Ferment at least one more month then bottle, priming with corn sugar and perhaps some lemon grass tea.

Age 6 months to a year.

I just tried making my first braggot after make over a dozen meads and I would have to say it depends on how "malty" you want it. I made a stout braggot and while it's deliciuos it taste more like a honey stout then a mead. I made a gallon batch and used 1.5# honey to 1.5# dark malt. Also, I used safale 04 (blue package). So, think about how much of a beer profile you want to a wine profile. I would suggest using a wine yeast if you want more of a wine flavor.

Sounds like an awesome brew...one thing that I would do is consider adding the blueberries (or at least a big portion) to secondary rather than right in with the rest of the fermentables. You'll get much more blueberry flavor and aroma in the end...

What kind of yeast do you think you'll use?

In terms of malt to honey ratios, generally it's pretty close to 50:50 for a braggot. If you go for that ratio, you might need to cut back the honey to less than 10 lbs unless you're looking for something really strong.

Thank you for the suggestions! I do want it to tip closer to the mead side of things, just a nice round mead, easier to drink than some meads, more refreshing. I am thinking I would like it to be lightly sparkling.
I guess I would like to use a wine yeast, but dryer than sweet.
Does a 4 lbs of pale malt extract to 6 lbs of honey sound reasonable? Would it be pretty comprable to the amount the original recipe calls for?? I don't know the Alcohol potential of malt vs honey.
Biochemetic- so you suggest putting say a quarter of the blueberries in the must/wort letting it ferment out and then add the rest of the berries to the secondary fermenter after a month or so? Would I need to sterilize the berries at this point or would the alcohol content be strong enough to kill anything I wouldn't want in there at this point.

Thank you for all of your feedback! It is so helpful!!!
Wails

I plugged some numbers into ProMash:

For a 6.5 gallon total volume batch --
10 lbs honey and 2 lbs sugar (the original recipe) = expected OG 1.079
6 lbs honey and 4 lbs light DME (your proposal) = expected OG 1.063
7 lbs honey and 5 lbs light DME (another option) = expected OG 1.081

If you use the last scenario and ferment to dryness (and with a wine yeast, you definitely will...even with most beer yeasts you will go to dryness at that OG) you will probably end up between 9 and 10 % ABV. Bear in mind that "dry" for a braggot may not be dry like a mead where you can easily end up at 1.000 or even lower FG -- there are always a certain percentage of unfermentable carbohydrates/dextrans in malt. I'd expect your FG at dry to be ~ 1.005-1.010, give or take. Even if you only get down to 1.013, you'll be at 9% ABV, and 10% at 1.005.

Of course, you will get a small amount of extra fermentables from the blueberries, but that's probably negligible in the grand scheme. Further to the addition of fruit -- you can pick whatever proportion you want to add at various stages. Personally, I tend to add almost everthing in secondary...I'm sure a 25:75 ratio would be fine. Again, you'll get more recognizable aroma and flavor from the fruit in secondary...not that there's necessarily anything *wrong* with putting it in primary. It will just be different, and the taste won't be as "blueberry," in the same way that wine doesn't necessarily taste like the grapes that you started with.

To answer the other fruit question: no, you do not have to do anything to sterilize the fruit in secondary. A lot of people do put the fruit through a freeze/thaw cycle -- helps release the juice. I'd just do this, then pour that into a disposable muslin bag so it's easier to get the pulp out later.

Finally, since your recipe was somewhat vague on the amount of hops and amount of time you're planning on boiling, you need to decide how much bittering you want from the hops. Cascades are nice hops, with a nice citrusy aroma, but how much bitterness vs aroma you get will depend on how long you boil, the volume of your boil, and of course, how much hops you add. (if you need some help on figuring out bitterness levels, let us know...)

Oh, and really finally...at the risk of opening up a whole different discussion and hijacking the thread, I'd likely do your boil with just the DME, and add the honey after you start to cool down (wait until your temp is down to ~ 150-160 before adding the honey. This will absolutely preserve a lot of the honey aromatics, and also you will get better hop utilization with a less concentrated boil.

I'd likely do your boil with just the DME, and add the honey after you start to cool down

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Biochemedic is right on this part for sure. I did my normal boil with just DME. Basically I simmered my specialty grains, brought the water level up and added 1/2 my hops, boiled for 45 minutes, pitched the remaining hops for the last 15 minutes, cooled down to 75*F, and then dissolved the honey. After two weeks it got down to a FG of 1.005. The honey flavor came through great. The only thing different I'd do next time is use a wine yeast.

2ndGenBrewer said:

I would suggest using a wine yeast if you want more of a wine flavor.

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One thing to consider about using wine yeasts with malt is that they are incapable of fermenting maltotriose, a complex sugar found in malt, whereas beer yeasts are. Sometimes, this sugar can make up as much as 10 percent of the total sugar. This means that when you use wine yeasts, you can often end up with a fairly high final gravity, and therefore a sweeter brew.

Well, I learn something new every day! So am I safe to assume if you wanted to do a higher ABV braggot you would need to start low using a beer yeast. Then once it finished up add extra honey and pitch a wine yeast?

2ndGenBrewer said:

Well, I learn something new every day! So am I safe to assume if you wanted to do a higher ABV braggot you would need to start low using a beer yeast. Then once it finished up add extra honey and pitch a wine yeast?

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I've made a braggot of 11% with only wine yeast, but I started with a pretty high OG as it is. If your beer yeast has a fairly high alcohol tolerance, you could probably get to a good strength with just that. I think Nottingham can go as high as 10%. But the main point that I was trying to make is that if you use only a wine yeast, you will certainly wind up with something sweeter, since it leaves a lot of complex sugar behind, where beer yeasts have evolved to digest these sugars. So if you were to use a beer yeast, whether you finished with a wine yeast or hit your target with the beer yeast alone, it would likely wind up drier than if you used only a wine yeast.

Okay. That what I thought you said. Thanks for the clairification.

I have made a number of braggots using S-05 which they say is tolerant up to 12%.
Well, I can say it can go much higher, the best laid plans and all. I just crash chilled it, racked and back sweetened. A very dry braggot with a hop bite was not what I was going for.
Just remember you can always make last minute changes to save a brew. May not be what you planed, but you can make something else that taste fantastic.

Wow this is such great information! I am so glad I posted about this, I hadn't thought of many of the things that you have brought up.
I plan on brewing on Tuesday and I think I have come up with a plan!
I want to use 7 lbs of honey and 5 lbs of light malt. I think I am going to go with the wine yeast 05. I think I will add a smaller portion of the blueberries to the the cooling must and then the rest in the secondary to try to get some good round blueberry taste. My aim is 9-10% do you think this recipe will help me to achieve this?
I do want to know about the hops. I want the citrus to be crisp with almost no bitterness. I should I go about getting that?
Thank you again for all of your help with this, it has been great!
~Wails

PrincessOfWails said:

Wow this is such great information! I am so glad I posted about this, I hadn't thought of many of the things that you have brought up.
I plan on brewing on Tuesday and I think I have come up with a plan!
I want to use 7 lbs of honey and 5 lbs of light malt. I think I am going to go with the wine yeast 05. I think I will add a smaller portion of the blueberries to the the cooling must and then the rest in the secondary to try to get some good round blueberry taste. My aim is 9-10% do you think this recipe will help me to achieve this?
I do want to know about the hops. I want the citrus to be crisp with almost no bitterness. I should I go about getting that?
Thank you again for all of your help with this, it has been great!
~Wails

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sounds like a good plan...as I had noted, you should easily get 9%, and probably close to 10% with the plan above...FYI, technically, US-05 is an ale yeast, but will make a good mead or braggot too, and as previously posted has the alcohol tolerance you're going for.

In terms of your hopping rates, if you want a citrusy blend, I think Cascade is a good choice...it has a wonderful citrus nose (almost grapefruity). There are other citrus-like hops such as Cascade, Chinook, Simcoe, and even some newer ones called Soriachi Ace and Citra. Personally, I'd stick with the Cascade.
If you want "little to no bitterness" you're talking about IBU (International Bittering Units) rates of 20 or less. The exact calculation will vary by a number of variables, including the amount of sugar in your boil, the volume of the boil, the exact alpha acid rating of your hops, the form of the hops (whole leaf vs. pellet vs. plugs), and the time in the boil. ASSUMING: you only put the 5 lbs of DME in the boil, and you use a 5 gallon boil, and your Cascades are 6% AA pellets (about average for Cascade), and do a 45 minute boil, you will get ~ 13 IBU from adding 1/2 oz for the whole boil -- this gets you the bitterness, but if you want more of the flavor and aroma, you need to do other additions later in the boil, say another 1/2 oz each at 15 min and 5 min. This will give you an additional 5-6 IBU (for a total of ~19 IBU's), but this will give you a much different/stronger hop flavor and aroma than if you achieved the same 19 IBU's by adding all your hops earlier in the boil.

I would ask your LHBS where you buy your hops to help you with the calculations again when you actually buy the hops so you can make a specific hopping plan for the actual brew...Oh, and you could also consider using another 1/2 oz of hops as "dry hops" -- these would be added to the secondary along with the blueberries...this is another way to get more of the aroma and flavor from hops as opposed to the bitterness (you get no bittering from dry hop additions).