How much honey malt for blonde ale?

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Grantman1

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I'm brewing a very light blonde ale with Saaz hops and would like a slight honey flavor to come through.

I understand you've got to be fairly delicate with it, and as of now I'm planning on honey malt making up 4% of the grist, along with 85% 2 row and 11% Vienna.

Am I using enough to get some of the flavor? I'd like it to come through almost as an afterthought. I'll be mashing at about 150.
 
I would not go higher than 5% personally. sorry, I hate that malt. anyway, it's important not to overdo it =)
 
I've used it twice. I did 1# both times (8% and 10% of grist). The honey perception does come through, but it's the sweetness you notice more. Almost like a light crystal malt. So if you want sweet with a honey overtone, do the 1#, otherwise adjust down based on sweetness.
 
I'm hoping to balance the sweetness as much as possible, while leaving some of the honey flavor. Sounds like a tricky thing here. I definitely don't want an overly sweet beer. I'm probably going to be in the area of 20-20 IBUs.

Thanks for the insight.
 
I did an 5 gallon APA that had 0.5# of honey malt with the rest being base malt. This was way too much honey malt and made the beer too sweet. There's some honey taste I get from it but not as much as I was expecting.

Be careful with that malt is all I have to say.
 
I'm gonna just have to see what happens....test batch will be 3 gal batch with just under 1/4 lb of honey malt, or about 3.7% of grist, the rest being 2-row. I can't imagine that little would make the beer overly sweet, but I guess we'll see.
 
I use 1/4 lb in several of my lower grav beers (3-4% of the bill). In my opinion, that's plenty.
 
5% is often seen as the MAX amount you can add, so starting at around 2-3% can help you figure if you want more or less depending on your palette
 
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