Beer-style categories are often rooted in historical tradition and techniques, such as Baltic porter or Berliner weisse. Meads, on the other hand, are usually sorted by ingredients. As a result, they have names that range from obvious, such as “cyser” for an apple-honey mix, to obscure, such as “metheglin” where spices are added to honey wine. “Braggot” stands at the crossroads of beer and mead, as a blend of honey and malt, but it’s an overlap that contains some wildly dissimilar beverages. At one extreme, you have traditional beers styles augmented with honey, such as a honey nut brown ale. But at the other end, you might have a dessert mead that features caramel and toasty malt notes to accent the honey. In the middle ground, you can find things, such as Polish miodowa, that successfully straddle the two worlds. But the marriage doesn’t always succeed: some braggots sabotage themselves. That’s how you can get a weak, vaguely honey-flavored, thin-bodied beer or a honey wine whose roast malt serves more as a distraction than a complement.
Starting Point: Ingredients
Before you dive into your first braggot, you need to understand what honey, malt, and hops can bring to the party. Honey is quite fermentable, so adding it to a beer recipe will usually lead to a lighter body and a drier finish. As a result, if you want the sweetness to match the honey aroma, you might need a maltier base beer, or you can add some raw honey when the braggot has finished fermenting (note that this is risky when bottling). Honey’s floral notes can also play nicely with yeast esters and some of the more interesting hops varieties. More distinctive varietal honeys such as buckwheat or eucalyptus are good if you want to give honey a larger role in the mix.
From the other perspective, the rich palette of malt flavors can add new dimensions to a basic mead. Nutty, toasty, or bready character can be complementary. Stronger notes of roast or chocolate malt can work, but moderation is required to avoid overwhelming the honey.
Braggots don’t necessarily require any hops, especially with mead-inclined recipes, but floral or citrusy hops partner well with honey. Also, meads find their balance between sweetness, acidity, and tannin. Adding bitterness provides another axis of complexity.
Finding Your Balance
A good braggot showcases both the malt and honey, but you’ll need to decide where you want to be on the continuum: honey beer, malty mead, or something more unique. If you’re primarily a beer brewer, it’s best to lead with your strength and add honey to a more traditional beer style. If you’ve brewed both beer and mead before, getting more creative is probably worth the risk.
Regardless of your choice, remember that honey can be delicate, and it’s easy to bury its subtle character. Use enough honey to stand out, consider using a stronger varietal honey, and don’t overdo the specialty malts.
Some Suggestions
The key is finding complementary combinations. Consider beer styles or malt profiles and how they might click with honey aromatics and flavor. From the other direction, you can pick a varietal honey and build your recipe around that.
An example that works both of these angles would be a Belgian witbier brewed with orange-blossom honey. Witbier already has citrusy notes that play into the honey’s character, making it a perfect partnership. An orange-blossom hefeweizen would work almost as well.
Alternatively, buckwheat honey’s robust, funky character can stand up to more competition from the beer side. You can toss it together with chocolate malt, roasted barley, or even smoked malt. That opens up a lot of possibilities, leaning from porter or schwarzbier character to bigger beers such as English old ale or doppelbock.
The land of braggots is ripe for exploration!