DocHolidaze

Recipes 

I have access to quality raw honey, i would like to be able to drink it 30 days from starting fermentation and i enjoy higher percentage beers, dark or light,is there any receipies that anybody want to suggest that would fit this situation

moorerm04

Recipes 

30 days!? That is a stretch for any high gravity beer. Your best bet is to try and find a honey Hefe recipe scaled down to 2.5 gallons.

Revvy

Recipes 

Nothing....Higher gravity beers usually take longer than 30 days. My "NORMAL" gravity beers tend to take 8 weeks from grain to glass. Higher grav beers can take weeks to months longer.

For one thing bottle carbing ALONE is going to take a minimum 3 weeks, actually those big PETE bottles that come with a mr beer kit, it would be a minimum 1 month just to carb and hopefully condition the beer.


This cartoon by Lazy Llama should give you an idea.



If you want high gravity beers, you have to be more realistic in your time table.

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DocHolidaze

Recipes 

nice this is the stuff i need to hear, so to get a beer lets call it 8.0 what kind of time table am i looking at, and could i do straight mead in a mr beer?

moorerm04

Recipes 

8%.... You are looking at more like 6-8 weeks at best IMO.

Calder

Recipes 

Also, honey is slow to ferment. If you have a high concentration of honey, it will take longer to ferment than a regular malt beer.

GuldTuborg

Recipes 

No, it really shouldn't. It might take longer for the flavors to even out (if it's a big beer), but honey usually ferments very quickly in wort.

I'm in agreement with the poster above - an 8% beer or braggot will take at least 2 months to be drinkable, but longer would be much better. A straight mead will take probably double that time.

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DocHolidaze

Recipes 

thank u so if im trying to speed things up i may want not use honey at all?

DocHolidaze

Recipes 

r u saying honey is faster? im hearing two different things now what to do?

GuldTuborg

Recipes 

A lot of people tend to state that honey ferments slowly, because meads used to ferment slowly back when most brewers/meadmakers didn't know as much about yeast and yeast nutrition. There's nothing about honey that makes for slow fermentation in wort; it's just sugar, basically, and ferments quickly. When making a straight mead (just honey, water, and yeast), though, honey makes for a high acid, (frequently) high gravity, low nutrient must, which of course takes a long time to ferment. Add honey to beer wort, where the acid is lower and the nutrients are higher, and there's no problem, just like there's no problem for modern meadmakers who use nutrient regimens, ensure proper yeast health, and sometimes even control for acidity. That's my take on the matter, anyway.

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