When to add honey?

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RnQBrew

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I've got a recipe for a Cinnamon Honey Ale- it's as follows:

6 lbs Amber DME
.75 lbs Caramel/Crystal 40L
3 lbs honey

1 oz Northern Brewer (60 mins)
.5 oz Cascade (60 mins)
1.5 oz Tettnang (20 mins)

1 Tbsp Cinnamon at flameout

Wyeast American Ale

Do I add the honey at the same time as the DME? Never used the stuff before...

Planning on brewing this up this weekend, if anyone else feels up to it, let's compare notes in this thread
 
From what I've been reading on here, if you want to keep some of the flavor of the honey then don't add it until the wort temp drops below 110 degrees. I guess if you add it during the boil you'll boil out the flavor and just be adding a fermentable sugar. Someone with far more knowledge should be along shortly to answer your call.
 
It depends what you want to get out of the honey. If you are looking for the most flavor from the honey then add it at the final minute of the boil. Just boil long enough to mix the honey in.


Edit: Also remember it will take longer for the honey to ferment out and clean up so give this brew some extra time to finish.
 
Good info, thanks guys. I did some more searching (probably should have done it PRIOR to my post :rolleyes: and it sounds like a lot of people are saying if you want honey taste (which I do) you should use honey malt instead of actual honey.

So I think for the first attempt I'm going to keep it a bit more on the simple side and opt for the honey malt.

Plugged it into iBrewmaster and my estimated ABV dropped by about 1.25 %, OG by about .012.

I'll post up some thoughts after brew day on Sunday!
 
honey malt can make the beer too sweet if you over do it. So be careful on you additions. If your making a 5-6 gallon batch I would not suggest more than 1/4-1/3 lb. Also honey will dry out the beer so if you skip the honey all together the beer will be completely different than the recipe intends.

Where did you get the recipe from was it brewed before and if so what were the other brewers results? One of my favorite honey ales is BarBar Belgian Honey Ale. I made it exactly per the recipe my first time and it was awesome. I brewed it again and played with the honey malt quantity and the second batch was not even close to being as good as the first. If you really want to use the honey malt use it sparingly and I would still use it with real honey added at the end of the boil. Maybe .25lb malt or less and 2-2/12 lb honey at 1 min.
 
I've recently made an IPA with 500 grams (just over a pound) of really dark chestnut honey (added at flameout) with excellent results. I would imagine a lighter honey wouldn't shine through too much, no matter when you add it. So I suggest shopping around and getting something with a really intense flavour, and adding it in moderation.
 
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