Braggot fermentation expectations vs reality

[Jogurt]

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.
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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.

 

[Jogurt]

Day 9 photo.

 

[Jogurt]

For the sake of completeness:
I decided to ramp the temperature up a bit. Probably around 20°C in there (68°F).

14 days into the fermentation I was finally able to see the foam breaking down enough to see the surface of the beer.
16 days - still about 75% of the surface covered with a thin foam.

My question at this point (if anyone reads it) is:
What is your recommended maturing time before bottling in this case?

 

[corwin3083]

Honey, in my experience, takes a while to ferment completely, even in a braggot. I'd leave it to bulk age for 2-6 months, then bottle and age for 6-12 months more.

Given the amount of headspace that you have, I'd rack it into secondary after a month or so, though, in a container that the braggot will fill completely.

 

[Jogurt]

I'd say that is a bit of a overkill with O.G. of just 1.070 (finally managed to dig up the brewsheet) isn't it? Anyways thanks for the feedback, I will definitely let it sit for a total of 1 month at least.

As I said in the O.P., I do not have any reasonably sized secondary. And even if I had, this was brewed just for the sake of a local competition here in Slovakia by the end of February. The organizator included braggot as a special category for the year.

However after browsing numerous braggot threads here on homebrewtalk, I can say there is an overall shortage of threads concerning anything under O.G. 1.100, so any feedback is still more than welcome.

 

[corwin3083]

It sounds like overkill, but remember that using honey for 40% of your fermentables means that that 40% will ferment out almost completely, which in my experience changes the aging situation considerably, making it much more similar to a mead than a beer. If you don't want to age it, though, then don't. If you're going to carbonate it, I'd still advise a minimum of a full month in primary; bottle bombs due to incompletely fermented honey are not fun.