Ancient Braggot recipe help

[Sigvaldi]

Scientists uncovered a grave in southwest Germany. Part of the discovery was a cauldron that once held an alcoholic beverage. Testing the residue, they deduced that it contained 5 ingredients: honey, barley, meadowsweet, mint and yeast. I will be doing extract, as I don't have a mash setup (yet). Munton's Light DME is made from barley, so I will be using that.

So, the recipe I have decided on so far:

1 gallon
2 lbs honey
3 lbs light DME
2 oz Meadowsweet
6 oz mint
Yeast

The meadowsweet will be seperated and boiled partially at 60, 15 and 1 minute. The mint will be added in the secondary and I will taste regularly to make sure the flavor doesn't get too strong. Any advice up to this point is also appreciated.

But my main question is the type of yeast. Bronze age brewers likely would have used natural yeasts, making wine yeasts probably the best approximation. And while they didn't have control over what yeast they could use, I do. What wine yeast would you recommend to brew a braggot? I have used Red Star Premier Blanc in past meads, and I like the neutral finish. I was considering that, RS Cuvee, or possibly Lalvin d47. Any other recommendations, or feelings on using these?

I do not have temperature control. The current weather keeps my brewing compartment (AKA the top shelf of my closet) at roughly 68 degrees.

 

[bernardsmith]

If you want to mimic or replicate what might have done then why don't you simply use the lees from a previous batch of wine or beer?

 

[Sigvaldi]

If you want to mimic or replicate what might have done then why don't you simply use the lees from a previous batch of wine or beer?

While historically accurate, I only have one batch going right now using a beer yeast. Plus, in the event this turns out well, I want to be able to replicate it easily, and not to have to brew the same batch that i used the lees out of previously just to get the same yeast.

I am more interested in mimicing the recipe and not necessarily the process. After all, I am using a malt extract.

 

[imasickboy]

I'm partial to d47 in braggots.

 

[giraffe]

Is that 6oz of fresh mint? Being January, i doubt it, and 6oz dried would be a horrible mistake. Mint is pretty potent. id go with a sprig or two, 6oz fresh seems excessive.

Perhaps use a saison yeast?

 

[madscientist451]

Since this is an experimental recipe, you may want to make a tincture, combining the mint with some vodka and then doing some taste trials to see how much works.
Later on, if you can dial in the taste profile you like, you could add the mint to secondary.

 

[Sigvaldi]

With mint being so strong, perhaps I can ommit it altogether and then serve it over mint?

My local grocery has some herbs available year round, so fresh mint is no problem. I can see what you mean about the strength tho. So, perhaps like i said above, serving it with mint rather than brewing.

 

[giraffe]

I mean, a sprig or three will be fine. 6oz is a quite large handful of mint. Use caution. you can always add more if its not enough.

 

[honeycon]

Peppermint is way stronger than spearmint.. Look at some tea blends and see if you would like to make a strong tea to add instead of sprigs.. Your recipe has no mention of liquid or batch size.

 

[Sigvaldi]

Further research suggests the most common yeast used in ancient times is Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This is found in many top fermenting ale yeasts. Do perhaps in place of a wine yeast, using an ale yeast would be better?

 

[ForsbergFotos]

Further research suggests the most common yeast used in ancient times is Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This is found in many top fermenting ale yeasts. Do perhaps in place of a wine yeast, using an ale yeast would be better?

Red Star Cote de Blancs is Saccharomyces cerevisiae

 

[Sigvaldi]

Red Star Cote de Blancs is Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Thank you. I knew it was a common strain and so had to be available in some commercial yeasts. Using cotes de blancs, I was able to find a list of several yeasts containing this strain. But, I'm liking the cotes de blancs because I feel ita finish will complement the unusal herbs used in making this braggot.

 

[bernardsmith]

I believe that just about every wine, bread and ale yeast is S cerevisiae. Brettanomyces, of course, is not but that was never a commonly used fungus in wine or ale making - because I suspect it was never as commonly found on fruit as the Sacch. Which yeasts have you found that are lab cultured for wine or ale that is not S. cerevisiae?

 

[Sigvaldi]

I believe that just about every wine, bread and ale yeast is S cerevisiae. Brettanomyces, of course, is not but that was never a commonly used fungus in wine or ale making - because I suspect it was never as commonly found on fruit as the Sacch. Which yeasts have you found that are lab cultured for wine or ale that is not S. cerevisiae?

I know, at least, that bottom fermenting yeasts tend to be S. Uvarum (Source ). I figured wine yeasts mighy be a different species too, but it's looking like wines are pretty much just different strains if s. Cerevisae (aside from some high tolerance strains which may be s. Bayanus (Source ). The same source notes a few other, less common strains. However, the most common type does seem to be s.c. and if I were to choose a random packet, I would likely end up with exactly that.

 

[The_Whingnut]

How did it turn out?

 

[Sigvaldi]

My apologies for not updating. The gravity was so high, it took forever to ferment. My poor little yeast were probably so stressed that it affected flavor. I did not like how it turned out. I'll have to try again soon with far less of my sugars. Maybe 1 and 2 lbs of honey and malt respectively.

 

[Ryue]

What was your OG/FG? What kind of yeast and honey did you end up using? I would be interested in trying a version of this myself

 

[Sigvaldi]

It's been so long I can't remember the exact figures. I want to say the og was somewhere around 1.16, if not higher. I ended up not saving the notes for this one because of how terribly it turned out, haha. It finished pretty high too, and the flavor was overly sweet. Like, it tasted of straight sugar.

This was among my first experiments when I firsr started brewing. Knowing what I do now, I would definitely have approached it differently.

 

[Ryue]

Being that I have only made mead, anything beer related goes straight over my head. Maybe I over complicate things, but I usually just get confused..

So, forgive me if this is a stupid question, but if you wanted to use barley instead of extract without a mash set-up, could you not just put the crushed barley in a bag and let it "steep" with the other ingredients? Then when you're ready just remove the bag of barley, add the honey and yeast and be good to go..?

 

[Dland]

If it was me, on the 1.16 stuff, I'd try a high ABV tolerant champagne yeast and see what it does. Sometimes mistakes like that turn out great. But your do have to give them time in a cool temperature stable place, (and even more time, sealed, you do not want any oxygenation) the results may not be what you were aiming for, but they might be quite good.

On your question; There is lots of informative info on what your talking about in the BIAB Brewing section of this forum. I'm running an all grain 3 pot rig now, been a long time since used extract, but I might suggest you check out your extract measurements regarding the high gravity reading.

 

[bernardsmith]

Your "bag of barley", if not carefully mashed and boiled, might be full of LAB (lactic acid bacteria) which is wonderful if your interest is in making a sour beer or mead. Even if you are interested in making a sour batch you do need to know what you are doing as you can create a problem of cross contamination for any subsequent batch. Those LAB are easy enough to remove IF you know what you are doing but they tend to be rather resistant to being removed from plastic or scratched glass and the like...
BUT more than that using extract simply means that the mashing and extraction of sugars has been done by the manufacturer and you get fully malted barley to which you simply add boiling water to produce all the sugars the yeast can ferment. With whole grains you need to know the correct mashing temperature to ensure the amount of sugars that are fermentable; you need to sparge the mash to obtain the maximum amount of fermentable sugars and you need to boil the grains correctly so as to reduce the total volume of water (to increase the gravity and prevent such chemicals as DMS building up. So - bottom line - IMO - unless you enjoy brewing beer you may just want to make use of DME (dry malt extract) or LME (liquid malt extract) if your focus is on the mead. But if you have four or five hours to spend on a brew day while making your mead then using whole grains certainly gives you more options...

 

[Sigvaldi]

I'm also a mead guy, so doing this for my first experiment was probably a poor choice. Haha. But, it did teach me a lot about beer brewing. At the time, BIAB was still a foreign concept to me, as I had not been doing beers or anything like it. Extracts became king to me, because someone with little to no prior experience or expertise could easily use them with a low rate of failure.

While I still don't like beers, I might try this recipe again in the near future with less sugars. The result was overly sweet, so definitely less sugars. And maybe a more tolerant yeast would work, but I think I'd rather go the other route.