When to add honey

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sweaterman

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I am brewing a honey lavender wheat and the recipe says to add the honey at 30min left in the boil. I have found a few places that say to add it at the very end of the boil or three-four days into the primary. The theory being the yeast will digest all the simple glucose, and not move onto the maltose readily. Any validity to this?

http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2009/09/05/brewing-beer-with-honey/

http://www.brew-dudes.com/brewing-beer-with-honey/519

I am also putting in some Honey Malt to increase the honey flavor (.5#) as I have read that all the additions tend to dry out the beer and don't really add much honey flavor.

What do you guys think?

Also I am going to 10 Tbsps of Lavender in the last 5 mins and then probably another 5-6 Tbsps in the last 7 days of fermentation. Again, LMK what you guys think.
 
i have no experience at all with this but I too am looking to add a heavy dose of honey to my next batch. I was wondering if you can add it in the boil, and then add it before bottling as a substitute for sugar?
 
I know you can add it as the priming sugar, but again, I am not sure how much of the honey flavor will be retained. I didn't get a good answer from another forum either. Maybe in time. I think what is really going to add the best replacement for that honey flavor is the honey malt. I let the forum know when I get to drinking this.
 
I have added honey to a hefeweizen recipe when trasferring to the secondary and it did retain most of the honey flavor (and bumped up the ABV). I have tried several variations with the honey additions and this recipe and adding to the secondary gave me the best honey flavor profile.
 
I've made this honey ale a few times, and added the honey both at the start of the boil, and at flame-out. I like the flame-out much better.

Somewhere on this site (maybe the Mead section?) there is a lot of information about not boiling honey.
 
It's better to not boil the honey. Boiling drives off the aromatics. Probably better to add to boiled water while it is cooling just to disolve it.

In the same vain, adding after active fermentation rather than primary or the boil, will reduce loss of the aromatics.

You can bottle with it. Roughly 5 ozs per 5 gallons. Use the same weight of honey as you would use corn sugar. It replaces the priming sugar, not added with it.

If you want honey flavor, honey malt will be much better than actual honey, but that involves doing a mini mash.
 
I love brewing with honey. It adds a dimension not found in most commercially available beer. I have never added it after the boil (flameout or secondary) but I usually add half the amount of honey at the start of the boil and half at about 10 min. left. I worry about contamination, which is why I prefer to boil it for at least a few minuets. I have made the T’ej out of Sam’s book Extreme Brewing several times (its good with 1 oz crushed coriander and .25 oz crushed fennel) and a Honey Wheat with 5 pounds of honey and 8 pounds of wheat DME. Both of which had a nice amount (my opinion) of honey flavor and aroma using the 50/50 schedule above.
 
I brewed a heather ale, using raw heather honey. I added the honey to the secondary when I racked. If you don't use a secondary, I'd add it to the primary after fermentation has slowed down. As mentioned, boiling and/or adding the honey during active fermentation reduces the aroma.

My ale turned out well! There is little honey flavor, but there is some aroma (which contributes to flavor, of course). I haven't used honey malt, but I hear good things.
 
I have tried several variations with the honey additions and this recipe and adding to the secondary gave me the best honey flavor profile.

I agree. I've tried honey additions with 10 minutes left in the boil, flameout, and primary and secondary fermenters. I've found that the later in the process you add honey, the more flavor you get in the finished product, everything else equal.

Last beer I did with honey (actually drinking one now) I just poured the honey into the secondary fermenter right out of the jar, then racked my beer on top of it. If you stress over sanitation.... maybe stick to a flameout addition. Nothing bad happened without pasturizing the honey... beer is great. Took a little longer to condition in the bottles, being 8.5% alc/vol. Any more than 1lb. honey per 5 gallons of beer think about letting it sit 5 or 6 weeks in the bottles before trying one, instead of the usual 3.
 
most recipes I've seen say to add the honey at flameout. no worries about contamination at that point, the wort is still more than hot enough to kill whatever little amount of baddies might be in the honey.

Using honey to prime won't really add any honey flavor at all, it's just not enough for that purpose.
 
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