Recipe Help - Honey Wheat

Ok so I have a ton of questions for this one. I will try to ask as few as necessary.

This is going to be my first partial mash. I figured it would be a good one to start with since there are so few ingredients, and I don't want to make a beer almost entirely from barley and wheat extracts. The problem I'm having is that I don't know how much wheat and 2 row to use. My malt bill looks like this.

OG ~1.050

Wheat - 35% = 3.2 lbs wheat
Barley - 45% = 4.46 lbs 2 row
Crystal - 5% = .52 lbs
Honey - 15% = 1.14 lbs

So I plan to use the full amount of crystal, a portion of the wheat and barley, then supplement the rest with malt extract. What portion of wheat and barley should I use in my partial mash? Should I use as much of the wheat as possible say 2 lbs wheat and maybe 1 lb of 2 row? Or should I do half and half? Something else?

My other question involves working with honey. In designing great beers by Ray Daniels, Ray mentions flavor loss issues with adding honey to the boil kettle. He mentions holding honey diluted with water at 176F under a Co2 blanket and then adding to the beer at high kraeusen. I really don't know what holding it under a CO2 blanket would involve, but would it be possible to essentially dilute my honey in water, leave it covered at ~175F while I'm brewing, and add it to the kettle at knock out? Would this pasteurize it enough and minimize flavor loss or am I running the risk of contaminating my beer?

Last question. Does the amount of honey I'm using seem ok? Too much? Not enough? Maybe a better way of asking is how much impact should this amount of honey (~1 lb.) have on my beer?

Thanks guys.

Honey is a simple sugar, and is going to dry out your beer. It also ferments out 100%, and only leaves the florals from whatever plant nector made the honey. Sometimes this gives you a good honey flavor in the beer, sometimes it doesn't.

Most brewers will use about 5-8% of the grain bill in honey MALT to get a good honey flavor.

If you do want to stick with actual honey, I've had much better luck with wildflower honey from the whole foods store than I have with the typical honeybear from the grocery store. I add my honey at flameout. Honey is like 99.99% sanitary, so no real need to pasteurize.

+1 on the above use of honey or malt, typically a wheat beer is 60% wheat malt or more so I would flip the amount for the wheat and the 2 row and add some rice hulls to the bill to help with the sparge.

You can also add 1/2 lb malto-dextrin powder to the bill to counter act the thinning the honey will do.

IMO less than 2lbs of honey won't give you much, I will usually use 3lbs for a 5G batch

Yep, add up to 10% honey malt for a nice honey like sweetness.

I agree with everyone else, ditch the honey and do a a grist of something along the lines of 60% 2-Row 30% wheat 10 % honey malt. Keep it simple and use some nice citrus hops to compliment the sweetness from the honey malt.

I don't have any experience using honey malt, but I think you will get more honey flavor with it rather than liquid honey. Be advised that honey malt has a very strong flavor - a little goes a long way. Get some honey malt and taste, I've tasted it and it has a super strong honey flavor. I'm going to make a honey wheat over the summer and I'm not going to use more than .5 lbs in a 5 gallon batch. Once again, I'd use too little rather than too much.

Something to consider since you are only doing a partial mash is the percentage of wheat in the extract you are using. I believe most wheat extract is around 50-60% wheat.

Also if you aren't force carbing you can prime with honey at a ratio of 4.7 oz honey to 4 oz corn sugar.

Alright sounds like I will go with the honey malt then. Any suggestions on what percentage wheat and 2 row I should use in my partial mash?

I'm thinking about doing a Honey-Wheat Double IPA with Columbus, Chinook, Summit, and Centennial. I think there will be enough sweetness for my palate from the malt sans the Crystal...

29% Simpsons Golden Promise
29% Muntons Xtra Light DME
14% Muntons Xtra Light DME
14% Orange Blossom Honey
14% Rahr Red Wheat

WLP001

I want to go with real honey for this beer. I want that dryness and subtle floral character, not that honey sweetness. I was thinking about adding the honey when the wort was approx. 150 F, and let it slowly cool in the ice bath to 65 F before pitching the yeast. Wondering if I would have better luck pitching it at high krausen? I'm not racking to secondary so that's out of the question.

Honey malt starts to give a subtle honey flavor at about 5% of the total grain bill, and is in your face prominent at about 10%. I typically add 0.5 lbs per 10.0 lbs total grain bill to a few of my recipes. Bump it up slightly from there is you want it to stand out, but don't go above 10%.

Bottle with honey...you can get a nice initial flavor and aroma from it.

To get the standard 2.5 vols carb you want to use 3 tablespoons of honey PER GALLON. This is 1.5 ounces or about 63 grams. So for a 5 gallon batch you would use 7.5 ounces of honey or 15 tablespoons (slightly under a cup...liquid). I personally use 4 per gallon as I like them slightly more carbed.

They will take slightly longer to carb...I use 16oz bottles and found 4 weeks to be about right.

It works...trust me. In addition to honey malt you can really make honey the dominant flavor. Or with bottling, you can use less and add another grain to get some more complexity in your beer

I will be doing a honey wheat in a few weeks and I want to use honey not honey malt. Like previously mentioned in this thread I to read about pasteurizing the honey by diluting it in water to approx. the same O.G. as your wort and holding it at 170'ish deg for an hour or so. Ten adding it dying the height of primary fermentation. Has any one done this before? Just looking for tips/tricks/lessons learned. What does it take to make a CO2 blanket?

I can't imagine it will retain any of the honey flavor at all. It *should* just ferment out into pure alcohol.

We just sampled our honey wheat and we added #3 clover honey at flameout. It has been in the bottle for 2 weeks and sampled a couple last night. Well carbonated with a nice dense tan head, good lacing and pleasant honey aroma, mild, not over powering. Needs a little more conditioning time as it was a little sweet with a stronger honey flavor than we anticipated.

OG was 1.062 and FG was 1.011. Depending on how it tastes in a couple more weeks we may tweak the hop additions for a little more balance but so far very pleased with the results.

Chamomile is what you want to use for a strong honey flavor. 1oz @ 5 mins boil for 5 gallons is what I do.

http://www.greatfermentations.com/Chamomile-1oz/productinfo/GF158/

I have been drinking my honey wheat for a couple of weeks now. Turned out great! I used 1lb of honey for a 5 gal batch. It is a bit strong on the honey flavor but I like it. I would probably ease back to .5-.75 lb to make it meet more peoples tastes next time. I did pasteurize the honey before I used it.

Calichusetts said:

Bottle with honey...you can get a nice initial flavor and aroma from it.

To get the standard 2.5 vols carb you want to use 3 tablespoons of honey PER GALLON. This is 1.5 ounces or about 63 grams. So for a 5 gallon batch you would use 7.5 ounces of honey or 15 tablespoons (slightly under a cup...liquid). I personally use 4 per gallon as I like them slightly more carbed.

They will take slightly longer to carb...I use 16oz bottles and found 4 weeks to be about right.

It works...trust me. In addition to honey malt you can really make honey the dominant flavor. Or with bottling, you can use less and add another grain to get some more complexity in your beer

Click to expand...

Do you dilute the honey in warm water? Otherwise, why won't the honey just accumulate and stay on the bottom of the bottling bucket? Thanks.

jjbrewer said:

Do you dilute the honey in warm water? Otherwise, why won't the honey just accumulate and stay on the bottom of the bottling bucket? Thanks.

Click to expand...

Yes...I use a cup of water and add the honey over the stove for about 2 minutes, then I swirl like crazy and add it to my bottling bucket, rack beer immediately and bottle

StuckBrauer said:

Ok so I have a ton of questions for this one. I will try to ask as few as necessary.

Click to expand...

my wife loves honey'd beer. honey wheat in the summer, honey brown in the autumn and mad elf in the winter. how did everything turn out and what was your final recipe? would like to do this next spring with half my batch of american wheat.
Ben

I'd go 50/50 on the partial mash.

I just did a honey lemon wheat that turned out fantastic. It was 50/50 two row and wheat. I think the trick was splitting the wheat, half white wheat and half german light wheat. Plus a pound of flaked wheat.

Here's the recipe I came up with
In the partial mash I used:
2 lbs wheat
3 lbs 2 row
12 oz honey malt

In the boil kettle I added:
1.5 lbs wheat LME
.5 lbs light LME

Hops:
.5 oz Hallertau (60 min)
.5 oz Tettnang (60 min)
.5 oz Hallertau (15 min)
.5 oz Tettnang (15 min)

I thought that I had read somewhere to use more pale ale than two row, but looking back, I misunderstood it. I decided to give it a try anyways since I don't care as much for wheat beers, and thought worse case scenario, it tastes more like a pale ale that hints towards wheat beer. That's exactly what happened. I like the hops I used. The German hops complement the honey flavor pretty well. It certainly won't win any competitions since it's not really a wheat beer, and a bizarre pale ale, but I like it, and that's what matters.