Jogurt
Active Member
Recently (9 days ago) I made my first braggot experiment. I will begin by posting the recipe and then I will follow up with my questions for fellow senior brewers (I am just a newbie with a few batches of beer and mead each under my belt).
Single infusion mash, targeting for roughly 65-68°C (149-154°F)
82% Weyermann smoked malt - 5kg - 11 lbs
11% Caramunich type II (Wey.) - 700g - 1.54 lbs
7% Chocolate malt - steeped - 400g - 0.88 lbs
Targeted batch size 25l - 6.6 gal
100g ~ 4 oz Saaz hops evenly distributed between 60,15 and 5 mins additions
2.7 kg - 6 lbs - so called "Forest" honey, it is quite dark (not the darkest though) and delicious to eat as is
added a few minutes after flame-out.
This said, Brewtarget estimated 1.082 O.G. for 25l batch size.
However I overdone it with the sparge water. The O.G. was somewhere around 1.071 (do not have the brewsheet on hand) and the batch size proportionately larger, not measured precisely though. Not that it matter with my questions anyway, but I like to supply the entire info.
Pitched one pack of US-05, because I do not expect this brew to be too demanding on the yeast.
----------------
Now, if the brewtarget estimates are correct (and I have no reason to think they are not), I should have around 60% fermentables from malt and 40% from honey.
My expectations:
Day 7 - done fermenting
Day 21-28 - rack to bottles
Bottle-age indefinitely
Reality:
I kept it quite cold, because I did not leave exactly huge headspace.
Quite cold means aprrox. 60°F
Day 1 - yeast lag time (uh)
Day 3 - krausen appearing
Day 4 - krausen growing reasonably
Day 6 - fermentation looks healthy, krausen still growing
Day 7 - krausen reaching the top of the carboy.
Here I dropped the temp another few degrees to slow it a bit.
Day 9 - krausen dropped a little bit, but the fermentation seems ever happy with no intentions of finishing.
Now I know, that honey tends to ferment a bit slower, but with only 40% honey and overall O.G. of just a bit over 1.070 I would expect it to behave more or less like my standard beer.
Since it looks like it could take a lot of time in primary, I am thinking about the estimated bottle time by Day 21-28.
Do you think, I should leave it for a few more weeks than that? Or maybe even months? I do not have a reasonably sized secondary.
Another thing to do would be providing a blowoff and raising the temperature to my ordinary US-05 fermentation temp, which is around 68°F. It should not hurt the yeast, nor the beer character. But since I started cold, I am not sure if touching things mid-way is a good idea.
I would love to know what is going on inside this little beast, since it is behaving so differently from what I expected. But since it is in a carboy with a heavy krausen resting on top, I am reluctant to take samples for gravity reading and tasting.
Any advice, experience, tips on what to do, etc are heartily welcome. Everyone here seems to be making 1.100+ braggots with over 50% honey fermentables so I do not think those experiences apply entirely.
Photos provided.
Single infusion mash, targeting for roughly 65-68°C (149-154°F)
82% Weyermann smoked malt - 5kg - 11 lbs
11% Caramunich type II (Wey.) - 700g - 1.54 lbs
7% Chocolate malt - steeped - 400g - 0.88 lbs
Targeted batch size 25l - 6.6 gal
100g ~ 4 oz Saaz hops evenly distributed between 60,15 and 5 mins additions
2.7 kg - 6 lbs - so called "Forest" honey, it is quite dark (not the darkest though) and delicious to eat as is
added a few minutes after flame-out.
This said, Brewtarget estimated 1.082 O.G. for 25l batch size.
However I overdone it with the sparge water. The O.G. was somewhere around 1.071 (do not have the brewsheet on hand) and the batch size proportionately larger, not measured precisely though. Not that it matter with my questions anyway, but I like to supply the entire info.
Pitched one pack of US-05, because I do not expect this brew to be too demanding on the yeast.
----------------
Now, if the brewtarget estimates are correct (and I have no reason to think they are not), I should have around 60% fermentables from malt and 40% from honey.
My expectations:
Day 7 - done fermenting
Day 21-28 - rack to bottles
Bottle-age indefinitely
Reality:
I kept it quite cold, because I did not leave exactly huge headspace.
Quite cold means aprrox. 60°F
Day 1 - yeast lag time (uh)
Day 3 - krausen appearing
Day 4 - krausen growing reasonably
Day 6 - fermentation looks healthy, krausen still growing
Day 7 - krausen reaching the top of the carboy.
Here I dropped the temp another few degrees to slow it a bit.
Day 9 - krausen dropped a little bit, but the fermentation seems ever happy with no intentions of finishing.
Now I know, that honey tends to ferment a bit slower, but with only 40% honey and overall O.G. of just a bit over 1.070 I would expect it to behave more or less like my standard beer.
Since it looks like it could take a lot of time in primary, I am thinking about the estimated bottle time by Day 21-28.
Do you think, I should leave it for a few more weeks than that? Or maybe even months? I do not have a reasonably sized secondary.
Another thing to do would be providing a blowoff and raising the temperature to my ordinary US-05 fermentation temp, which is around 68°F. It should not hurt the yeast, nor the beer character. But since I started cold, I am not sure if touching things mid-way is a good idea.
I would love to know what is going on inside this little beast, since it is behaving so differently from what I expected. But since it is in a carboy with a heavy krausen resting on top, I am reluctant to take samples for gravity reading and tasting.
Any advice, experience, tips on what to do, etc are heartily welcome. Everyone here seems to be making 1.100+ braggots with over 50% honey fermentables so I do not think those experiences apply entirely.
Photos provided.