Using honey instead of DME

The friend that got me in to home brewing has used a pre hopped nut brown LME a couple times with great cheers by all . I bought the kit to try out for myself but wanted to change it up some so not to feel like a boring copy cat. What he did was add 2lbs. light DME to the nut brown kit during the boil. I was hoping to replace that with the right amount of honey to equal the light DME. Have not had any luck finding a conversion of this but it seems that a honey extract is the way to go.
Also was not sure when to add the honey for I have read a lot of different opinions on that as well. This is only my second brew so any tips or info would be more then welcome by little old me the beginner.

Thanks

About 2.6 lbs of honey will give you the same fermentables as 2 lbs of DME. The process behind this reasoning is too long to explain, but it stems from info in Designing Great Beers by Ray Daniels. Also see this post https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/my-beer-wit-hefeweizen-318928/index2.html#post3981581. I would add the honey with about 15 minutes left in the boil, but you're right, there are a lot of different ways to do this.

Well got some local raw honey from my LHBS and going to cook it up tomorrow. Thanks for the reply I will let you know how it goes.

Replacing DME with honey will give you a very different beer. Unlike barley malt extract, honey will ferment almost completely. This will thin out the beer significantly. That's not necessarily bad, but once you start adding 2-3lbs of the stuff you're really drifting more into the territory of a braggot than a beer.

As for conversions, it's tricky. The water/sugar content of honey can vary significantly from batch to batch, so the only real way to know for sure is to dilute a sample down in a known quantity of water and measure the gravity. If you're just looking for a rough approximation, 1-1.5 lbs honey to 1 lb dme seems about right.

MalFet is correct for getting the exact amount for the specific honey you bought. I was basing the 2.6 lb estimate off of standard extract potential values for honey and DME.

Wow never thought I was drifting that far away from the beer path adding honey to a LME but hay if it taste good I'm all for it. Just to let you know the wort was very sweet but I know that most that will be eaten by the yeast also the SG came out to 1.041. I guess since I really don't know much of anything about braggot how are other beers that have honey in them not in this category?

nye1006 said:

Wow never thought I was drifting that far away from the beer path adding honey to a LME but hay if it taste good I'm all for it. Just to let you know the wort was very sweet but I know that most that will be eaten by the yeast also the SG came out to 1.041. I guess since I really don't know much of anything about braggot how are other beers that have honey in them not in this category?

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A little bit of honey can be helpful to dry a beer out. A lot of honey will make it start behaving more like a braggot. There's no clear line that makes something one or the other, but several pounds of honey is usually enough to unbalance normal recipe.

I'm not saying it'll be bad, but honey and barley extract aren't generally interchangeable.

OK cool. Thanks for the information, I can use every bit right now only been at this two months

Know that the conversion we gave you will land you in the ballpark for the same OG, but as MalFet said, the beer will be much different.

Sometimes "changing it up" wont do what you intended to be different. I dont think adding that instead will necessarily give you a better beer,it could, but it will be different. Starting slower with experimenting may be better,sometimes it comes out good but if just "guessing"then its just luck or bad luck.