I have been living a life of exotic hops lately. My wife asked me why I have been brewing so often. I told her because the time is now. I have no idea what I am saying anymore. I am all hopped up on hoppy hop hops.

Beyond the BIAB experiments with Mosaic, El Dorado, and Equinox, this dreamed-up braggot has been on the schedule for a while. I put the recipe for this mead with Nelson Sauvin hops in it back in late March so it’s about time I got around to brewing this one. It’s too bad; this one will be great next year at this time – a real winter warmer. It could be ready before the end of this winter though.

On to the brew day! With only 4.5 pounds of grain to brew with, I made a no-sparge mash. I filled my mash tun with enough water to get me a 4 gallon runoff for the boil, which I did.

I modified the recipe a bit with by using just two ounces of Nelson Sauvin hops. I put a half ounce in at the start of the boil, another half ounce with 15 minutes to go, and then 1 full ounce at flame out.

Even though the majority of my grain bill was Pilsner malt, I stuck with a 60 minute boil. I know there is advice out there to boil for 90 minutes to reduce the chance of perceiving dimethyl sulfide in the finished beer. With the vigorous boil and evaporation rate along with my quick chilling, the 60 minute boil was insurance enough for me.

After it was chilled, I combined everything in the carboy – honey, wort, and enough water to bring the full volume to 4 gallons. Even with some good stirring, much of the honey dropped to the bottom of the Better Bottle so I had this Jello 1 2 3 (Google it) look going on.

The other big change to the recipe outside of dropping Warrior hops was the change in yeast. The Wedding mead turned out too dry using the champagne yeast so I went with D-47 dry yeast instead.

A day after the brew session and fermentation is in full swing. Here are some photos from the day:

The dream was to make a white wine-ish braggot. We’ll see how close I get.

You know what we say – Brew On!