Buckwheat honey?

Hey guys,
I have a recipe for a honey oatmeal stout that I want to brew. It calls for two pounds of buckwheat honey. I've never heard of this stuff before but did some research and learned a little about it. I also learned that it would cost me about $15 to get two pounds of this stuff shipped to me in FL. Could I substitute regular clover honey for this? If anyone out there has ever tried this please let me know if there is a big difference between it and clover honey.

Thanks,
Billy

Buckwheat honey is pretty powerful stuff. I don't think you would need much of it. You could probably substitute Heather honey - that is also a powerful one.

I don't have an answer, but I recently saw buckwheat honey in a Ukrainian ethnic market down the street from me. I'm not sure if there would be an equivalent in Florida but you might want to check a global foods store before buying online.

Was it at rich's in Ukrainian village? That place has so much honey!

if the recipe calls for buckwheat honey then definately don't use clover, it's just to light. Buckwheat honey doesn't even really look like honey... it is extremely dark and doesn't taste at all like the honey bear kind

yeah there is nothig like buckwheat honey, it its the dry stout of honey
i am a bee keeper and have a few buddys that run bees on some hippys organic:cross: buckwheat crops , its good but i will tell you ,i brew stouts all the time and have access to buck wheat honey. i have never used bwh for a stout ,never thought about it and after reading this i still never would.
it would be just a waste.

it does make an fine mead thoe , taste like a crazy dark honey rum.

Clayton said:

i have never used bwh for a stout ,never thought about it and after reading this i still never would.
it would be just a waste.

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What are your reasons for not using it? Do you think it is too strong of a honey? Should I just omit the honey from the recipe, or try to substitute something else?

Thanks for the replies!

I have used a buckwheat honey for a dunkelweizen (one of my very early brews), and it was quite nice. The raw honey has a bit of a barnyard aroma to it, but that doesn't carry through into the beer. It adds, as far as I can remember, a bit of "stout-ishness" that will work well in your beer. I'd say spring for it this once, and if you don't like how it turns out, well, lesson learned, eh?

As mentioned, buckwheat honey is STRONG tasting stuff. Two pounds is an awful lot, but maybe it'll work just fine.

chirs said:

Was it at rich's in Ukrainian village? That place has so much honey!

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It was. That place is amazing for honey.

i brewed irish stout with clover honey, pretty much all it did is boosted alcohol content,

I know this thread is a bit old, but I just picked up some buckwheat honey from Whole Foods. I know they have some stores down in FL. It really wasn't too expensive but it tastes great. I can't wait to use it in a beer, it tastes very dark, almost like molasses.

I've brewed with several different kind of honey's from 1# to 2# additions. I've tried adding the stuff at the end of boil and to the secondary. In my experience, the aroma of honey doesn't carry through to the finished beer. So from that, it has become my opinion that the type of honey used in a beer isn't important. At the end of the day, the aromatics are too volatile and in too low a concentration to survive to the finished beer. Now, I save my honey for mead and use other sugars for drying out my beers. It makes me sad that I haven't been able to get that amazing honey aroma into my beers but that's just the way it seems to be.

Bottle with the honey if you really want the aroma/flavor to come through...I only bottle with honey and it really works. And clover honey is a joke, you get nothing from it...I call it the budlight of the honey world. Stick with the buckwheat or other suggestions. Orange blossom honey works amazing for bottling as well