Braggot Yeast

I'm toying with the idea of making a pale ale based braggot, and am having difficulty deciding on a yeast. The recipe is below, it'll be OG 1.115, ending around 11-12%. Should I be using a beer yeast (WLP099) or a mead yeast? I've never made mead and am unfamiliar with the choices of mead yeast and I've also never made anything this big. Any help on how to best ferment this would be great.

Cascade Braggot

12 lbs Maris Otter
1 lb Crystal 10L
1 lb Vienna
8 lb Orange Blossom Honey

1 oz Cascade (first-wort)
1 oz Cascade (10 min)
1 oz Cascade (5 min)
1 oz Cascade (Flame-out)
2 oz Cascade (dry-hop)

2 oz Orange zest (Flame-out)
1 oz Coriander (flame-out)

I made a braggot this past spring and used Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale yeast. Got the ABV to around 15% (forget what the gravities were). If you want to use a beer yeast you would need something like that or a barleywine yeast that can survive and thrive at high alcohol levels. WLP099 can obviously do that.

However, using a beer yeast might give you overpowering yeasty/malty or estery flavors that might not go well with or overpower the pale ale flavors you're looking for. If you can find Wyeast 9093, that looks like it might give you the flavor profile you want, I should think. But I'm not sure of the availability of that yeast strain.

Consider using a wine yeast or even champagne yeast. And I would definitely use yeast nutrient and yeast energizer- honey does not provide much of what yeast needs to stay alive.

It depends on what you want for the finished product. If you want an ale-like character, use an ale yeast. I've used Nottingham & S-04 with good sucess in my braggots, they're both easily able to go past 10%, especially with so much honey in your recipe. Nutrient & energizer can't hurt, but my guess is you'll have an explosive ferment regardless with that much malt.

Looks like a pretty well-balanced recipe. What type of fermentation/aging scedule are you looking at? Aging more than a few months might make your late additions & dry-hopping pointless. On the other hand, late additions & dry-hopping might make it drinkable sooner.

commonsenseman said:

Looks like a pretty well-balanced recipe. What type of fermentation/aging scedule are you looking at? Aging more than a few months might make your late additions & dry-hopping pointless. On the other hand, late additions & dry-hopping might make it drinkable sooner.

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Yeah, I was thinking of nixing the dry-hop and pushing one or two of the other additions a little earlier. Once primary fermentation is complete, I'll probably bulk age it 5-6 months, then bottle-age for another 4-5 months before I really start to crack them open.

TheTower said:

Yeah, I was thinking of nixing the dry-hop and pushing one or two of the other additions a little earlier. Once primary fermentation is complete, I'll probably bulk age it 5-6 months, then bottle-age for another 4-5 months before I really start to crack them open.

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What I'm planning to do for my most recent Braggot, is to bulk age it for several months, then a week before bottling dry-hop it to give it that fresh hops aroma. Only one way to find out how it will work!

How did this turn out?