First off some jargon:
Braggot
NOUN
A form of mead or beer made with half honey, and half malted barley
So there we have it, a braggot is a half beer, half mead hybrid. We’d always thought about making one, after all with so many friends at craft breweries in London it was only natural.
So, when Josh at Brewdog Tower Hill, London got in touch to talk about an oak-aged collaboration, we knew it had to be a braggot.
We were very excited to go and brew with their shiny new kit in the bar at Tower Hill – it’s bigger than some of the breweries we’ve been in and certainly shinier!
We had an awesome day talking to Josh about the brew and certainly learned a lot more about beer brewing than we knew before.
After a lot of discussions, we decided to go for a lightly hopped base beer, primarily comprised of pilsner malt, with some flaked oats and wheat for structure. After this was complete we made a batch of mead, made with our orange blossom honey.
We then mixed the two together in a foeder (a "foo-der" is a long, large barrel, in this case, 2000 liters) and pitch the Brewdog house yeast. The braggot was left to ferment out in the foeder, and remained in contact with the wood for 108 days!
It’s been really interesting (and fun!) to pop into BD TH and taste the beer as it’s evolved over the past 3 months – tasting the oaked notes coming out and the sweetness drop has been fascinating.
We're launching this at the meadery on 23rd November - see here for more details!
Our first braggot in tank
So many shiny fermenters!
The mash tun
Discussing malt
Our braggot in the foeder