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New York State and braggots

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dogglebe

NewBee
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Oct 14, 2003
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Some friends and I are spitballing about opening a meadery in New York. When braggots came up, one friend said that a meadery/winery cannot make a braggot as using grain in the recipe makes it a beer, as far as licensing is concerned. I local commercial mazer once told me that he couldn't bring grain into his premises.

Can anyone confirm any of this?


Phil
 
I thought it was a TTB thing, which means it's federal. I could be wrong.

You could ask the folks at Rabbit's Foot, they do braggots.
 
It's a federal law. No mixing of grains and wine making. Not a-ok with them, so unless you have two entirely separate areas to work with it'll never pass the feds. You also have to have 2 different licenses - winery and brewery.
 
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So you can put honey into a beer (honey lager) but not grain into a mead (braggot) for no good dang reason I can think of?

I don't understand the world.
 
It's because of the verbage. You can not 'brew' a mead. The word brew and the word mead do not belong in the same sentence. You 'brew' a braggot, you 'brew' a beer, but you MAKE a mead or a wine. The processes are different and the tax rate is different. Cross contamination can occur with grains as well, so your mead could also not be listed as a gf product if the feds allowed wineries/meaderies to 'brew' products. Also, even for breweries the ratio can not be 50/50, the majority of the fermentables have to come from the grains. As a winery you can not even have a bag of grain on premises because it is considered a whole different animal from the wine making supplies. In the feds eyes, mead is a wine plain and simple while a braggot falls under the beer category. I honestly understand why it is this way but it can be frustrating. So when J and I finally get the meadery open braggots will be made in the house for us to enjoy and the meads in the building for everyone else to enjoy.
 
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I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that Rabbit's Foot puts out a braggot under a completely different company (aka their brewery), at another property, thus avoiding any issues with the Feds.
 
mmclean said:
From Kuhnhenn Brewery website:





What's that about?
Click to expand...

I have to say that I haven't tried their meads, but have had friends who have said that they are decent. BUT in looking over their site I believe most of their wines and 'sweet wines' are from kits. I'm not entirely certain that anything that isn't a beer isn't from someone else's recipe and/or work load.
 
Pyments don't violate the wine is not beer rule, since grapes are traditionally made into wine. So you could do a pyment in your winery, though I believe a cyser might be a no-no as cider is usually lumped into the beer category or given its own separate one. Fruit wine is ok to mix with grape wine and mead, probably because the alcohol % is in the same range and so the taxes are all the same, as is the name "wine". (Most meads must legally be named "honey wine".) There is some logic to the system if you follow the money (go figure).

Rabbit's Foot does indeed have a second label (Red Branch) that they use for cider and I think beer, though at least one braggot goes under the Rabbit's Foot label. They do have separate spaces for the grain and honey, so that takes care of that law, but I'm not sure about the rules on labels re: company name vs. range of products winery/brewery.

FWIW, I think Dogfish Head had to add extra grain into their Midas Touch to get it to legally fall under "beer". So there are rules about honey beers too.
 
akueck said:
FWIW, I think Dogfish Head had to add extra grain into their Midas Touch to get it to legally fall under "beer". So there are rules about honey beers too.
Click to expand...

They did, and when Jon was asked to do a braggot at the DFH pub he was told it had to be at least 51% grain fermentables/49% honey fermentables.
 
I'm not entirely sure if the "separate facility" needs to be in a different building altogether. You might be able to have one building, but separate cordoned-off areas for the beer and mead/wine. Each also needs separate "tax-paid" areas, I think. And you can't have the grain passing through the winery section to get to its area either. So after all the hassle, it might end up being easier to build a wall between them. But again, I think the two areas can share a roof.
 
akueck said:
I'm not entirely sure if the "separate facility" needs to be in a different building altogether. You might be able to have one building, but separate cordoned-off areas for the beer and mead/wine. Each also needs separate "tax-paid" areas, I think. And you can't have the grain passing through the winery section to get to its area either. So after all the hassle, it might end up being easier to build a wall between them. But again, I think the two areas can share a roof.
Click to expand...

You are correct, I believe. I know that Ballast Point down in San Diego simply walled off their distillery to keep everything separate from the brewery, but still in the same building. I realize distilled spirits and wine aren't really the same, but I'm pretty sure there are equally strict rules regarding keeping everything separate from the brewery.
 
In the making of wine (which we need to think of when we're talking about mead), grains are not an allowed adjunct. It is for this same reason that maple syrup is not allowed in the production of wine (or in our case, mead). Though I'd love to see how the folks at Sap House meadery in NH got around that one.

Anyway, the way to get "around" that law is to make a beer, or better yet, a "malt beverage". A winery can NOT produce malt beverages, so a company that wants to produce wine and beer (or malt beverages) has to also have a brewing license. The facility can be bonded as an Alternating Premises, but the TTB (Federal) does not really like to give that one out, and one would have to go back and forth with them for a while (or at least, that's been my luck).

Once the facility is setup as an alternating premises, the company would have to notify the TTB each time the production facility changes over from beer to wine and the other way around. I do not recall how the finished product had to be stored (separate areas or combined), but I don't believe that the government cares too much about the Tax-Paid area. That area is for alcohol for which the taxes have already been paid, so they don't really care as much about that. A tasting room for example is a type of tax-paid area.

Now, all this being said. There are undoubtedly going to be people in the industry that disagree with at least something I've said. And that's because if the TTB is one thing, it's inconsistent. Many things depend on who is assigned to your application/license, and how THEY interpret the rules.

Brad
 
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