Replacing Honey with LME

I have never made or tweaked a recipe before and need some advice.

I am going to make jm088's Holly Christmas Ale (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f78/holly-christmas-ale-145580/) but instead of adding a pound of honey I was thinking of replacing it with some light LME that I have laying around for roughly the same gravity points.

What should I expect? If I do this should I just add the LME at the beginning of the boil? Or am I just foolish and should buy a pound of honey?

Well, if the recipe calls for honey I'd use it. Honey is basically 100% fermentable, so by using LME instead, you'll end up with a higher FG. It looks like on that recipe it specifically calls for honey to dry it out.

OK thanks. Yeah I was not sure what honey would contribute because I have never used it. So I want to mix it in at flameout, is that what it means by end of boil?

commonsenseman said:

Honey is basically 100% fermentable,

Click to expand...

I'd really like to know where people are getting that info. Mostly because it's false. Honey is about 80% fermentable sugars and 20% impurities (which give it flavor). IF honey was 100% fermentable, it would be a 1:1 ratio with cane sugar for priming. This is NOT the case at all. Depending on the extract you use, honey could be as, more, or less fermentable.

IMO If a recipie calls for a pound of honey, there's a good reason for it. Especially if it also calls out a type of honey.

I would add the honey during cool-down, once the wort is below 110F (80-100F is a good range).

Golddiggie said:

I'd really like to know where people are getting that info. Mostly because it's false. Honey is about 80% fermentable sugars and 20% impurities (which give it flavor). IF honey was 100% fermentable, it would be a 1:1 ratio with cane sugar for priming. This is NOT the case at all. Depending on the extract you use, honey could be as, more, or less fermentable.

Click to expand...

Ok, I'll rephrase my statement.

100% of the sugars in honey are fermentable.