In all my years of mead making, I have made a mead to fit almost every category available. Notice I said ‘almost’? There is one group I’d never ventured into: The Braggot.
See, I don’t much care for beer (apparently a flaw in my character that several friends are actively trying to remedy). In my defense, I’ve only been able to drink beer for about the last five years. Before that, even the smallest amount left me colorfully ill. I have made a tentative friendship with a few micobrews – Hefeweisens and fruity ales (often called ‘girly beers’ by more stalwart beer drinkers.)
What does beer have to do with mead making? A braggot is a beer-style mead, and a very difficult mead to make if one does not care much for the taste of beer. The process is rather funny in retrospect, but I was not amused at the time. As mentioned in previous writings, mead making for me always seems to be an…adventure…so to speak.
It was one of my brew buddies that suggested I give this a try. There’s actually a whole flock of ‘em that have been trying to get me to brew beer for years…Scoundrels, the lot of ‘em. The stumbling block? See paragraph 2 above.
However, I love a challenge. What better way to test both my brewing abilities and further my tasting skills as a mead judge than to make something I’m probably not going to like the taste of? Fortunately, I had mentors that were willing to keep an eye on me and play guinea pig.
One fine chilly day in February, I load up and head over to my brew buddy’s place to learn about ‘the boil’. Its looks a lot like making any hot cereal, pouring water over the grain in a big pot and boiling it to release the fermentable sugars in the grain. There is sort of an arcane science to the process filled with strange terms and conditions that just make my head spin. The end product was five gallons of grain induced sugar-water bittered slightly with hops. (They really did teach me better than this, I’m just being difficult for sport.)
To make this into a mead, it must have the requisite amount of honey or it’s just another beer. I added twelve (12) pounds (one gallon) to finish out the 6 gallon ‘must’. Add yeast and the adventure truly begins.
I have always been led to believe that the up side of beer brewing is the turn around time. It is possible to produce a drinkable brew in just a few weeks according to some homebrewers. Yeah, well not me. Six weeks in, my stuff is still too sweet and mostly tastes like a beer! (Go figure.) I decide to have my mentor taste it: Young, still fermenting, but has promise.
Another two or three weeks go by. I’ve got a beer loving friend over and offered him a taste, explaining that it’s young but I’d been told it had promise…big mistake. It was AWFUL! I was crushed! What had gone wrong? A frantic call to my mentor was made and I was advised not to panic or do anything rash. He’d give it a taste again the following week. A week and a half later? Young, but starting to realize some of its potential… Huh, what?
Two weeks later the same series of events repeated themselves. Now I am wicked pissed and so discouraged that I put the carboy in a time out. I wasn’t going to talk to it for three months minimum and if I didn’t see some dramatic improvement I’d chuck the whole mess down the drain.
Well, it was more like four months before I got back around to it but there was a significant change. There were still flaws so I contacted my mentor again and told him I thought my problem was the lack of carbonation. Could sparkling this make that much of a difference? Yes, yes it could…and it did.
Well, the story isn’t over. I have to wait a few weeks to know how it ends. So far, the sparkling of the mead improved it so much that I entered it in the Colorado State Fair Homebrewers Competition. I’ll have to report back on what their judges have to say.
My brew buddies like it, and so do several of my friends. Maybe there is hope.
Cheers!
Morgan
Cheers!
