Thursday, November 5, 2009

Belgian Barley Mead

My latest hair-brained idea of a recipe. I want to make this next, if I can keep the wort warm enough to ferment at 70-75F.

Ingredients

5# light/amber malt extract
4# buckwheat honey
1# Crystal 80L
1.5# Munich
.25# Carafa III
.5# Chocolate Malt
2oz Warrior or Simcoe hops (maybe 1 each??) 60 min
1oz Simcoe (1/3 @ 30, 1/3 @ 15, 1/3 @ off)
1oz Sterling (½ @ 10, ½ @ off)
1 tsp. Gypsum
1 tsp. Irish moss (15 min)
Belgian Strong ale yeast

Procedures

Put 2 gallons of water and Gypsum in a pot and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let cool to 170F. Add grains and steep grains at 155F for 20 minutes. Remove grains, add extract and bring to boil. Hops as scheduled.

For honey, bring 1 quart of water to a boil for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in honey. Cover and let set at least 20 minutes. Add to boil at heat off.

Cool to 70F, rack, fill to 5.5 gallons and pitch yeast. Would be best with a big starter. After 2 weeks, rack to secondary for at least 2 more.

For a twist, secondary for at least 4 weeks over 1 pound of medium oak chips.

2 comments:

  1. Your barley-mead is also known as braggot, after looking over your recipe I think that you're going to end up with a thin bodied chocolaty, VERY hoppy beer.If that's what you were shooting for cool but If you were looking for more of a barley wine type beer, double the malt and cut the honey in half and cut the carafa 3 down to an once. And remember use a VERY big starter, you should actually repitch a lower gravity beers yeast cake. Good luck

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  2. This is pretty cool I have recently concocted something similar to this. Instead of accenting with Chocolate I am working with peppermint and oolong tea to add more of an earthy sweet taste. How did this turn out?

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