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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bragging on braggots

Rick Bonino

Bellwether is about to do for braggot what it did for gruit.

The North Spokane brewery specializes in Old World offerings like braggot, a honeyed beer/mead hybrid, and gruit, a typically hopless ale brewed with herbs and spices.

In February, it packed its cozy space for Gruitfest, featuring a half-dozen of those on tap. And on Saturday, it hopes to attract an equally enthusiastic crowd for Braggotfest, with a dozen examples from several area breweries.

Like gruits, braggots can cover a wide range of beer types from light to dark, mild to strong, malty to hoppy.

“It’s almost more of a method than a style,” says Bellwether brewer/co-owner Thomas Croskrey. “There are all these different beer styles that you can turn into braggots and gruits.”

Braggot traces its origins to the Middle Ages among Nordic and Celtic populations (it’s mentioned in Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales”). They likely started out by blending finished ale and mead, often accented with herbs and spices, then began brewing using a combination of grain and honey.

Not all beers made with honey are braggots, though there’s no clear definition of the term today. It’s simply not something federal alcohol authorities see often enough to establish firm guidelines.

“Honey-based beverages basically died in the 1600s and are just starting to come back in a major way,” says Jeremy Kyncl of Green Bluff’s Hierophant Meadery, co-sponsor of Saturday’s event.

Croskrey considers 30 percent honey content to be the minimum for braggots, though his are typically 50-50. Even so, they’re not necessarily sweet; the sugar ferments into alcohol, leaving behind the flavor components.

And with more than 300 honey varieties in the United States – plus regional variations within those, based on climate and other conditions – there’s an abundance of flavors.    

Croskrey uses lighter clover honey in his new Summer Run session braggot (4.6 percent alcohol by volume), a collaboration with Nu Home Brew that gets its bright, crisp character from a combination of lemongrass, birch bark and basil.

Hearty buckwheat honey goes into his stronger, Scottish-inspired Seawolf (7.9), lending what Croskrey calls “almost a Tootsie Roll chocolate.” And given the natural variations in honey supplies, he says, “Every batch is a little different. This one’s a little more chocolatey, this one has a little more leather. I love that part of it.”