Elderflower Braggot

Reddit Recipes

Primary

Secondary

Gravity & ABV

Pre-Pitch Powders

Nutrients

Notes

Timeline Pitch to Bottle

Reddit Recipes

Primary

The original recipe is straight-up from the Reddit wiki, written by Storm. I scaled down the recipe to 3 gallons but didn't make any other (intentional) deviations.

The original 5 gallon recipe is better and easier. Several of the ingredients needed are pre-packaged in exactly the size you need for a 5 gallon batch, but if you scale down to 3 gallons, you need to buy bigger bags than you need and weigh out smaller volumes. I'll list what I intended to use here for the record, but if you can make use of the full 5 gallons, you should brew the original.

1.8 lbs Honey (I used clover, no varietal was specified)
1.8 lbs Gold LME
9.6 oz Elderflower
1.8 oz Heather
0.6 oz Golding hops
11g Lallemand Windsor
- Original recipe uses 10g but it sells in 11g packs and I didn't care to weigh out 6g

Secondary

Bottle conditioning
I did not intentionally backsweeten, but I added too much sugar for bottle conditioning and cut it off early with pasteurization, so it is likely there is some residual sugar here.

Gravity & ABV

Calculated OG 1.042
FG ~1.006
ABV ~5.03%

Pre-Pitch Powders

24g Bentonite

Nutrients

Storm recommended SNA, but I didn't think I could do that successfully with such a low OG, so I just waited for ~6 hours or so after pitch (when it looked like fermentation had started up) and then front loaded the Fermaid O/K.

GoFerm by package instructions
Fermaid O: 5.1g
Fermaid K: 3.0g

Notes

Biggest mistake in the recipe was probably that I forgot I had a 1 oz bag of hops - and while that's perfect for a 5 gallon batch, at 3 gallons I was only supposed to use 0.6 oz of it. Forgot to weigh that out, just yeeted the entire 1 oz in. But it doesn't seem like a problem so far, perhaps because I drink a lot of IPAs and don't mind hops.

The next weird part was around step 6 of the original instructions. At this point in the process, I was supposed to have added 4 gallons of water alone, and that combined with the other ingredients I am guessing should have come out to about 5 gallon total volume (so in my scaled down version, I expected to be hitting about 3 gallons). But my bucket had volume markings and it was obvious I was far short.

I took a gravity reading, checked the temperature on the must to compare against the hydrometer's 60F calibration temp, and worked out that my gravity was currently too high but should hit the target OG Storm put in the recipe - 1.042 - if I topped it off to almost exactly 3 gallon total volume with more water. So, that's what I did.

Timeline Pitch to Bottle

04/25/2021 - boil, mix, pitch

Followed the instructions in the original recipe to mix up the must and pitch the yeast. Fermentation is officially underway starting right about 1.042 original gravity.

04/27/2021 - removed herbs & gravity reading

Instructions are to remove the herbs "no later than 3 days" after pitch. I pulled the bag a little over 48 hours after pitch.

I only had one bag here, and that's a slight deviation from the original instructions calling for separate bags for each herb, with the apparent intent being that you can pull them out individually when each one has imparted sufficient flavor. I only had one bag of the appropriate size available and also haven't worked with either herb before so I don't even know what flavors to be looking for. So I didn't have the gear available to take advantage of this granular control, nor the knowledge to leverage it even if I had the gear... just used one bag. Maybe next time, haha.

The must smelled super hoppy when I took the bag out - which made sense, given I accidentally used 1 oz instead of 0.6 oz - but a small taste test actually mostly just gave me the elderflower + heather. We'll see how this develops as it finishes fermenting.

SG ~1.010

05/02/2021 - gravity reading

SG ~1.006

We haven't dropped very much in gravity here... with proper nutrition and such a low starting gravity, I expected to be finished by now. I hope we're not stalling out.

05/05/2021 - gravity and racking

SG ~1.006

I think we might have stalled. But even if the yeast hasn't completely given up yet, I do need more active yeast than this to have a shot at successfully bottle-conditioning...

I decided to rack today to get it off some of the herbs and such that leaked out of the brew bags. By inserting a hop cage and putting the racking cane on the inside, I was able to rack without picking up virtually any of the big chunky stuff - the braggot is still hazy, but it's cleaner to work with now.

05/06/2021 - repitch

I'm rehydrating some Laffort Spark yeast - which is advertised specifically as being good for restarting fermentation / difficult fermentations / temperature tolerance / etc - and I've put it in a mason jar with an airlock so I can slowly introduce braggot must to it and hopefully build up a really strong and healthy starter to pitch in.

I want to be sure this is dry before I add priming sugars and bottle, or I worry whether the extra sugars could cause a bottle bomb. Plus, I want more confidence in the yeast that they'll actually be able to ferment.

I've also resolved to try priming with sugar added directly to the main carboy rather than individual carbonation tablets this time, as I've already been skunked twice on the tablets.

05/09/2021 - bottled

Ok so, apparently "yeast attenuation" is a thing. I don't really fully understand it yet, but my best interpretation so far is that yeast generally don't take a beer-based brew 100% dry. SG still hasn't moved, so hopefully what that means is it's time to just bottle.

Put the gravity sample in a bucket, then the ~2 cups or so of water I used to dissolve my priming sugar into the bucket, and then racked on top of that to let the swirling motion mix the priming sugars into the bulk of the braggot for me.

From there, still had a few little bits of elderflowers or something, so I put the racking cane inside of the hop cage in the hopes of keep those bits out of the bottles, and then bottled.

Worried about bottle bombs. Calculated priming sugar for 3 gallons, but after racking realized that repitching plus natural clearing had created such a big sediment layer that I only had about 2.5 gallons... I'm legitimately unsure how I should/could have fixed that, a half gallon seems like a lot of dilution to introduce if I were to just top up to that size, but I couldn't really take the sugar out at that point either.

According to the priming calculator I used, using guess/check to figure out where how much sugar I used would land me... I think these bottles have enough sugar to hit 4.6 volumes. And this wasn't really explained in the calculator's suggested carbonation ranges per different styles of beer, but apparently most people don't recommend going over about 3 volumes in the average 12 oz beer bottle. While I wasn't trying to go to a whopping 4.6 volumes, I may nonetheless have overcorrected from my two previous bottle conditioned batches, which basically did not carbonate at all.

I think to be safe, I'm going to have to keep a close eye on these bottles and pasteurize them when they're well-carbonated to prevent any explosive issues. I'll also need to order an instant-read thermometer as the laser read one I use isn't suitable for pasteurizing bottles like this.

05/13/2021 - pasteurized

I pulled a bottle to test and the bottle almost gushed on me when I tried to crack the cap. It took me several pours to get it into a glass due to the heavy amount of carbonation.

So the good news is - this carbonated successfully! After like 3 days to boot! The bad news is it's honestly a bit over-carbonated and that meant - since this early into bottle conditioning I was guessing it wasn't done fermenting yet - that I was going to have to pasteurize to make sure these didn't ferment any further and cause bottle bombs.

Pasteurizing itself, of course, temporarily increases the pressure in the bottle, and since these are over-carbonated, I knew I'd have a decent chance of losing a bottle or two. But I figured it was better to pasteurize and deal with any likely bottle bombs in a carefully controlled environment than deal with the possibility of bottle bombs at any given moment moving forward.

I tried to hold at 140F for 20 minutes or 160F for 15 minutes, depending on where the bottles ended up during the initial heating process. I found it a little difficult to hit 140F reliably - maybe I can get better at that with practice. It could potentially help too, as I ended up with several bottle bombs in rounds that hit 160F. Three of them blew their caps and halfway emptied themselves, and a fourth actually shattered the bottle itself.

That's all kinda why I didn't really want to pasteurize in the first place - although to be fair, I expect it was so problematic in no small part due to the bottles already being under too much pressure.

In any case, I left two bottles unpasteurized to drink later that night, and the rest of the surviving bottles should now be shelf-stable.

That concludes this braggot! I'm working on a video for it, but the only thing left is to drink it.

Retrospective

Process Improvement

Probably don't yeet a full hop bag in when you're supposed to use closer to half of it...
On second thought after the taste-test I'm not sure I would use less hops on this, I think I like it bitter haha

Recipe Improvements

This is more like "things I did wrong" since it's somebody else's presumably well-tested recipe, but here we go
It's very bitter, and I think part of that is me accidentally overhopping a full 1 oz instead of 0.6 oz. It also tastes like the elderflowers bitter the braggot up as well. But honestly... I like it this way. I might overhop on purpose next time.
A lot of the flavors and aromas are front loaded into the aroma and they come back in the retronasal. The hops, elderflower, and honey all seem pretty forward. It's quite pleasant. But in the middle of the palate, the mouthfeel is a little light. That may be because it's a fairly light braggot - at about 5%. Personally, I favor brews with a bit more mouthfeel, so I may try upping that next time. I'm not sure if I could add something like maltodextrin or if I could simply increase the amount of LME until we're looking at more like 7% ABV, possibly with a little extra residual sugar to help with the body.
As a context note - the last step of the recipe calls for acid/tannin balancing as-needed. I skipped that step, and not because I think I know better, but because I'm so new to so many of these ingredients and using carbonation that there was just no way I would accurately ballpark what to expect from this brew after bottle conditioning. With more experience, I hope to have a better sense of where a brew is headed to make pre-bottling judgement calls such as how to balance, or if balancing is needed.
Overall I really like this. I have a feeling it could be better, and that's certainly in no small part due to my errors, but I think more experience is needed for me to fully understand whether I want to tweak the recipe at all to my personal palate. Or even more importantly, how I would tweak it. But it's clearly a great recipe in its base form and I may well brew it again after some additional adventures in braggots. At the moment, I have no point of reference or comparison. I've never tried any other braggots and I don't know what else the style has to offer.

Tasting

A caveat on tasting this one - remember that I've no prior experience with elderflower or heather, and no homebrewing experience using beer-side ingredients like LME or hops. My palate may not be particularly well-tuned for this one, and if I believe I am identifying something such as elderflower, for example - it is based almost entirely on what I remember it smelling like on brew day.

Nose

Seems to be dominated by the elderflower with honey notes. I don't get any hops, but post-brew research has suggested if you want hop aromas, it generally needs to go in during primary or secondary. Hops during the boil - which is where they are used in this recipe - are primarily a bittering agent.

Palate

The carbonation kicks in here, and it seems like that doubles down with the accidental overhopping I did on this to make it all have more bite and bitterness than the original recipe probably intended. Luckily, I don't mind that - I enjoy IPAs and all sorts of bitter beers - but I did have one bottle that was noticeably less carbonated where I noticed the mouthfeel was significantly smoother, and I suspect that's more in line with Storm's vision for this braggot.
The LME and honey show up here, and combined they almost remind me of a honey blonde beer. Of course, the bite, bitterness, and the elderflower (which I believe I am perceiving as a little bitter as well) all distinctly separate this braggot from tasting like a honey blonde as a whole. But it has a base, foundational flavor in the palate that seems similar.

Retronasal

Very similar to the nose, in my opinion. The main difference is that some of the CO2 lingers behind, crackling almost like pop rocks, and residual hops bittering lays alongside it. So in essence - it's the same as the nose, dominated by elderflower and honey, but bittered.

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