Lambic Braggot

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BRGriffith

BRGriffith

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Hello all,

Today I put together a Lambic Braggot, and I thought I would share the recipe and process for anyone else who's interested in trying something like this.

Recipe - 5.5 Gallon:

Primary
- 6 Lbs. Raw Wildflower Honey
- 1 Lbs. Maltodextrin
- 4 Oz. Chocolate Malt
- 12 Oz. Aromatic Malt
- 5 Tsp. Yeast Nutrient
- House Lambic Culture

Secondary

My house Lambic culture started as WYeast Roeselare to which I added the bottle dregs of some of my favorite sours. I've used it on a couple other things with fantastic results so far.

I steeped the grains for 30 minutes at 156℉ then used the runoff to dissolve the honey and nutrient. The Maltodextrin needs to be dissolved in hot water as well and provides the wort / must with some complex long chain sugars for the bugs to eat.

The OG measured 1.054, so with the expectation that the bugs will take it down to 1.000, that should yield 7% ABV. It has a very nice amber color with a pleasant toasty, caramel aroma and flavor.

I'll be doing about a 3 week primary then racking into a 5 gallon better bottle for its aging. I haven't decided what I want to put in secondary just yet - I may do fruit, oak, a combination of the two, or I may just leave it the way it is.

Cheers!

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I have a slew of questions

Do you like the mountain ridge raw honey? I think I have seen target carry that brand regularly. This may be a foolish question, but is the lambic portion of this braggot a more dry/tart-sour lambic or a more sweet fruity lambic (I've heard of both-I'm not familiar with that type of beer)? Have you made this before? I'm newer to brewing. Can braggots have hops? Would you ever consider adding hops to a braggot like this?
 
My, albeit, very limited experience with souring meads is that lambic bacteria do not ferment sugars to any great extent. I think that you can expect a drop of few points of gravity but not anything like 54 points. Of course, your house yeast may include saccharomyces cerevisiae
 
Baabaadoo said:
I have a slew of questions

Do you like the mountain ridge raw honey? I think I have seen target carry that brand regularly. This may be a foolish question, but is the lambic portion of this braggot a more dry/tart-sour lambic or a more sweet fruity lambic (I've heard of both-I'm not familiar with that type of beer)? Have you made this before? I'm newer to brewing. Can braggots have hops? Would you ever consider adding hops to a braggot like this?
Click to expand...

I actually do like that honey a lot. It's a little darker and it has a nice nutty flavor with hints of molasses. The aroma is very floral and sweet.

This is intended as a modern take on a traditional Lambic, so I'm hoping that it will end up nice and sour with some barnyard funk from the Brettanomyces. This is the first time I've done this actual recipe, but I've made several other sours before. I feel like this would be a good base to experiment from though.

Braggots can certainly have hops, and in most of them would go very well together. I chose to leave them out in this case because I want it sour, and IBUs inhibit the Lactobacillus as they increase the bitterness. Say, for example, I had made this have about 25 IBU, it wouldn't get nearly as sour as if it only had 5.

My house culture for this started as WYeast Roeselare which contains a Sacc strain, and was augmented with bottle dregs and mixed with a little Saison yeast. I suggest doing something similar if you try this and save the slurry to re-pitch. Doing this will make it sour quicker each time as the bugs get stronger. If fermentation lags past about 72 hours, I would add additional Sacc to kick off primary.
 
So it's been a couple days since I pitched this, so I decided to go ahead and take the lid off my bucket to have a look. To my surprise, there's already a pellicle developing! And it's only been 48 hours! The aroma is already awesome too, with a little farmhouse character coming through. Excited to see how this one progresses.

Cheers!

View attachment 1495489843579.jpg
 
Help! I think my mead is infected!

Lol.

This is the same braggot about 12 hours after the last picture was taken. Pretty crazy how quickly this one is changing. I think it's about time to lock the lid down on my bucket.

Another important thing to note is that in contrast to regular meads, Lambic should not be stirred / oxygenated during primary. Oxygenation prior to pitching is a good idea, but doing so afterwards can cause off flavors and even acetic acid.
 
That's crazy. It's supposed to look like that, right? Aeration would destroy the pellicle, which is a bad thing, right? What does that do? How does it cause off flavors? The bacteria just don't need as much oxygen?
 
Baabaadoo said:
That's crazy. It's supposed to look like that, right? Aeration would destroy the pellicle, which is a bad thing, right? What does that do? How does it cause off flavors? The bacteria just don't need as much oxygen?
Click to expand...

Aeration would technically destroy the pellicle, but it would grow back very quickly because of the presence of oxygen. They form as a defense mechanism when oxygen is around because the bacteria and brett involved prefer to work without oxygen. I've had a few sour / funky meads develop them in short timelines like this, then go away once CO2 begins to push out the oxygen. Then come back once the CO2 is gone during aging.

bernardsmith said:
My, albeit, very limited experience with souring meads is that lambic bacteria do not ferment sugars to any great extent. I think that you can expect a drop of few points of gravity but not anything like 54 points. Of course, your house yeast may include saccharomyces cerevisiae
Click to expand...

My guess is a healthy brett culture along with the sacch in the original roselare blend will have no issues bringing the gravity down to a good final gravity.The LAB (lacto and pedio) however will work pretty slowly, but do have access to the extra sugar reserve in malto-dextrin (the brett will eat some of this too).
 
I had asked at White Labs how many points they thought that L Brevis (WLP 672) could ferment and they said to me that 1% is the most they would think. I have never used a ped. Cannot imagine how that would work with honey (taste-wise) but the lacto with some residual sweetness is a very quaffable drink. Very refreshing.
 
I know that is what it is supposed to look like and it in not a bad thing, but DAMN..If you ever told a non-brewer you were going to drink whatever was under that monster they'd think you were batsh-t crazy....
 
Going to be throwing some Roselare at a hydromel of my own once it comes in the mail.

Going to do a second hydromel with black currant juice and lime zest, but that won't be sour (aside form the currants).
 
So I'm trying to decide what to put with this when I go to rack to secondary. An option I'm considering is raisins, dried plums, dried apricot and some medium toast American Oak.

Let me know what you guys think about that combo and if you have any suggestions!
 
BRGriffith said:
So I'm trying to decide what to put with this when I go to rack to secondary. An option I'm considering is raisins, dried plums, dried apricot and some medium toast American Oak.

Let me know what you guys think about that combo and if you have any suggestions!
Click to expand...

Don't rack. Just add your stuff to primary. Brett will handle any dead yeast byproducts.
 
So today I racked this braggot on to about 1/4 cup of Med+ American Oak, raisins, apricot, and plums in a 5 gallon better bottle.

I'm a little concerned about the possible production of acetic acid and I don't really have the means to flush a bucket with CO2, so I opted to rack over with plenty of trub for the Brett to eat and allow the active refermentation from the fruit to push out the O2.

The taste from the gravity sample is pleasantly lactic, reminiscent of lemons. There's not much farmhouse character coming through as of yet, but I expect that will develop over time. We're at about 1.008 at this point, so that plus the fruit sugars should give the bugs plenty of food.

Cheers!

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