Braggot: A Tale of Honey and Malts

A jar of honey walks into a brewery. The bag of malts can’t stop staring at all that sweetness as she sways across the room. The honey returns the stares with her own. She can’t hold back her passion for the malts.

Before this tale turns into a very bad soap opera scene, or a very bad Dad joke, we’ll just cut the possibility of either short and get to the point. Honey meets malt for the perfect marriage of a fermented beverage called braggot.

Where did the braggot come from?

Around the 12th century, if not earlier than that, braggot began its journey as a Celtic drink and very quickly became popular during medieval times all throughout Europe. One of the first historical mentions of this unique drink crafted from the combination of honey and malts came from the classic stories of Chaucer himself in the Canterbury Tales. One might even say, “A knight, a monk, a carpenter walked into a bar…”

We all know how jokes like those end up. But in our tale today of the honey and the malt, this story is all about the braggot. Let’s leave the knights, monks, and carpenters out of it…until the end, that is, when they all toast with a braggot.

What is a braggot?

And no, a braggot isn’t a person who likes to brag. It’s a beverage made of half honey and half malt. Or maybe it’s half beer and half meade. Or maybe it’s a combination of the above. It could also be not quite half. It could also include a variety of other ingredients that complement the combination of the honey and malts. Ingredients such as a variety of hops, herbs, and spices.

Defining a braggot with exact specifications is not easily done. It’s a beer made with mead. Or maybe it’s a mead made with beer. However, instead of going round and round, it might just be best to say that a braggot is an ancient mead beer hybrid (or an ancient beer mead hybrid).

What does a braggot taste like?

Regardless of what we might call it, the flavors are what really defines a braggot. Whether you blend the honey into the beer during fermentation, add it to the boil, or create your own blend directly at the bar, the flavor profiles of both the honeys and the malts should stand out above and beyond anything else.

And as brewers, you know that both honey and malts offer an intense array of profiles to create diverse characteristics in anything you brew. Depending on the honey chosen, along with the combination of any added herbs and spices, the array of flavors in a braggot can range anywhere from succulently sweet, reminiscent of fine dessert wines, to tantalizingly tart and everything in between. When paired with a balanced malt, your tastebuds might even experience notes of caramel and chocolate flavors.

With a plentitude of herbs, spices, and fruits all across medieval Europe, tossing these into the fermented mixture of honey and malted barley was also common at the time, to enhance the flavors. Hops, if even used then, were only meant for preserving beer, not flavoring it.

Today, hops have gained both popularity and notoriety when adding flavors to brews. And the same holds true when it comes to flavoring the braggots of the modern day world. Hops have taken over what herbs and spices used to once create. Whether that’s a good use of hops or not is another story for another fun fact.

What malts are used in braggots?

Neil from Home Brew Answers has summed up braggot for us quite nicely. “Wherever there are fermentable grains, you find beer. Wherever there’s plenty of honey, you find mead. And when both are in abundance, you get braggot.”

And at Malteurop Malting Co, there’s an abundance of grains. That is, after all, what we do.

So when it comes to your malts for a braggot, there’s no reason to go anywhere else other than Malteurop Malting Co. Remember that bag of malts at the beginning of this tale? Yep. It’s from Malteurop, and it’s got eyes for you, just as much as it had eyes for the honey.

Click here to learn more about Malteurop Malts and start bragging on your braggots today! You might even get a visit from a knight, a monk, or a carpenter. Cheers!