At what percentage of the fermentables does a “honey beer” become a braggot? 25%, 33%, 50%?
I’m not seeing where the style guideline calls it out. It says “A Braggot is a mead made with both honey and malt providing flavor and fermentable extract. Originally, and alternatively, a mixture of mead and ale.”
I’ve often wondered this too.
And do you measure by the contribution of sugars or by weight of the ingredients? A pound of honey has a very different sugar contribution from a pound of malt.
27.6%
That’s a great question. Can a Honey Brown Ale be an Alt Sugar Beer or a Braggot?
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This seems to be a resurrected style that doesn’t really have any modern guidelines. I have read that back in the day tavern owners might mix mead and ale as it was being served.
I have mostly run into Braggot in the context of mead rather than beer and so had the impression that it is very honey forward. I personally think of the percentages of honey vs malt in percentage of fermentables rather than in pounds because of the vast difference in weight vs sugar.
I have a Braggot on tap now that is about 50% honey and 50% malt as fermentables. It is 6% abv which I don’t think is typical, Ithink highr abv is more common, so I think of it as a “Session Braggot” or “Hydrobraggot”. At 50% fermentables from honey and the rest something like 44% munich and 6% 50-60 crystal it is very honey forward but there is enough malt presence that it drinks like a beer.
I don’t think you need 50% fermentables from honey to call it a braggot but in my mind it needs to be honey forward as opposed to a beer with honey notes. I am guessing that would usually be north of 30% but would depend a little bit on the grain bill and assertiveness of the honey used.
If a braggot is a mead, then the mead pedants will shun you if you use less than 50.0000001% honey as your source of fermentables. I’m in a few mead groups around the socials, and it’s pretty wild how offended some of them get. :
For the more pragmatic, I think it depends on how it tastes. In a braggot, the honey should be the (or one of the) predominant flavor characters. Otherwise, it’s just a honey beer.