DaBills
Well-Known Member
Mine is a little heavy on the alcohol taste. And no honey notes at all.... it all fermented out? I dunno I'm not a huge fan I might try it again when I'm set up for all grain.
White house beer
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DaBills
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I forgot to add.. The fiance loves it so that's nice.
edds5p0
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Mine was bottled 2 weeks ago, so it's still a bit young. While not fully carbonated, it has a very honey and malt taste. I accidentally forgot to add the mid boil hops, so they all went in at 5 minutes. I also made mine with a full volume boil. After a bit more aging I think it will be quite good.
I think this beer depends heavily on the quality of the honey used. Very flavorful honey really helps this beer, perhaps.
alestateyall
Well-Known Member
Mine improved greatly over time. After 5 weeks in the keg the aroma and taste have lots of flower and fruit qualities, most likely from the Windsor yeast rather than the honey (just my guess).
I am happy to report the beer was picked to be served at my local homebrew club's Christmas party.
I am happy to report the beer was picked to be served at my local homebrew club's Christmas party.
Brewskii
Well-Known Member
DaBills said:
When did you add the honey? This was my first time brewing with honey, but I have read that it's flavor easily breaks down in the boil.
Ive also read that raw honey needs to be added to the kettle at some point as you could get an infection from it.
I've no idea which is true or even if they are mutually exclusive but I chose to add as late in the boil as I was comfortable with. For me this was flameout. We'll see if it worked.
My buddy brewed this with some rather generic honey from the grocery and he did the same thing I did for the honey addition. He said at bottling time it smelled of alcohol and honey.
DaBills
Well-Known Member
I just followed the directions on honey addition. Boiled for 5 minutes. I also used a very high quality local honey.
Beervangelist
Member
I'm not sure what all the excitement is about. Politics is not an ingredient in beer.
alestateyall
Well-Known Member
Beervangelist said:
??
Bitterness is.
And this isn't a political thread!! Its about brewing this recipe. There is no politics here! No B.S. just BEER lol
I think its remarkable that, in a person's lifetime, we have gone from prohibition to the White House Chefs making homemade beer. I call that progress (and exciting).
jerrodm
Well-Known Member
Yup, not much more to it than that. Plus, it's cool to brew the same beer as someone famous, politician or no. If you found out Sir Sean Connery brewed his own wee heavy, are you telling me you wouldn't be interested in trying out his recipe? Or if historians unearthed the Wright bros' secret family recipe for Windy Day Porter*? I don't think it says much about peoples' politics that they're interested, just that they're interested in beer.
Cheers
*As far as I'm aware, this doesn't exist.
slight variation on the above: the recipes have become a collective experience, as illustrated by the 74 pages of this thread (and numerous other threads, on this board and elsewhere). it's fin to think that people across this country (and likely around the world) are brewing these recipes. even non-brewers have asked me if i've brewed the white house beer, so word is getting out.
For as much press as it's gotten, oddly enough, the couple people I talked to in my homebrew club hadn't heard about it.
DaBills
Well-Known Member
jakenbacon
Well-Known Member
:d
Lol you smile at such a comment when you were like the first one to 'go there.' Wow hehe.... :cross:
Oh yes the honey porter was a huge hit at Thanksgiving. It needs time in the bottle. After 2 weeks of conditioning I detected a bitterness in the finish that has diminished with time. Thanksgiving, 5 weeks, was fine. Lovely chocolate notes though I couldn't detect much honey (added at 30 mins.).
The bitterness may have been my over-hopping. The recipe called for 3/4 ounce of hops. I said "what the heck" and put in my full ounce packet.
Will brew again.
edds5p0
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After 3 weeks, I am calling my honey ale finished. It is very sweet with honey flavor, but not cloying. The finish is bitter, but it also brings the floral quality of the honey out in a pleasant way. This beer is rich, probably the most full bodied one I've brewed. I am glad I chose local wildflower honey as it really showcases the flavors from the honey. I will probably never use Windsor again as it is about impossible to keep out of the pour without leaving a considerable amount of beer in the bottle. Overall, I'm pretty happy with this brew.
Glad you're enjoying the beer. Just wanted to add my two-cents that Windsor is generally a pretty good flocculater and my experience is that it forms a nice compact and stable cake. There are lots of variables, though, which could explain why my experience with Windsor is different than yours.
I've used Windsor for this beer and this beer only, but i know other English yeasts (Wyeast West Yorkshire comes to mind) that are normally great flocculaters sometimes refuse to drop out
MtnHiBrewin
Well-Known Member
As edds5p0 said, while my W.H. honey porter was young, the honey and malt flavor was strong. After aging a couple of weeks, the honey flavor was pretty much gone and it was more "porter like". (edds5p0 is on page 73)
mooshimanx
Well-Known Member
My version of this beer has just "calmed" down recently; I used S-04 instead of Windsor, however. As is my wont, I drank it a bit green and it was really, really fruity due to the yeasty pour/greenness. It's really backed off to being extremely bready and toasty. I'm not sure its really my thing, but then again, I'm not really a huge fan of bitters in the first place and I don't know how much I like drying out a bitter with honey like this. I used a crystallized orange blossom honey (which will thus still have some waxes and such in there) and I feel like I can taste a waxy aftertaste, but I'm not quite certain if this is in my mind.
Overall, I will say its not really one of my favorte brews I've done. I did it to be a part of the zeitgeist, but I find myself wishing I had spent that brew day making something more my style.
Overall, I will say its not really one of my favorte brews I've done. I did it to be a part of the zeitgeist, but I find myself wishing I had spent that brew day making something more my style.
alestateyall
Well-Known Member
Attached are pictures of the White House Honey Ale and bottle as served at the Golden Triangle Brewers Christmas party. The beer was well received.
White House Honey Ale in pint glass given to all party attendees by Mitchell Distributing Company.
Another angle.
Label made by my lovely SWMBO.
White House Honey Ale in pint glass given to all party attendees by Mitchell Distributing Company.
Another angle.
Label made by my lovely SWMBO.
chicken
Well-Known Member
Just bottled my White House Honey Ale today. Honey flavor is quite evident. I did not boil the honey, but added it at flame out. There's an almost harsh bitterness, but I'm hoping that will smooth out.
seatbelt123
Well-Known Member
Bottled a few today for friends and family who, let's say, are very biased towards this beer. I'm sure they will loooove it. Actually it's really good even though it's a recipe I would pick. I provided a few notes before: basically English ale but slightly overshadowed by honey flavor and drying /elevated alcohol effect. Brewed 11/9 kegged 11/27.
Anyway I think the bombers and beer are good looking:
Anyway I think the bombers and beer are good looking:
jerrodm
Well-Known Member
Agreed--I've always had good luck with Windsor, although I do use a secondary and cold crash it. YMMV.
jerrodm
Well-Known Member
Update on my own WHHA: bottled yesterday, it tasted delish--I'm surprised at how mature it tastes after only two weeks in the primary. Was going to secondary but it was so clear and tasted so good I decided to go straight to bottles. The honey is present but not overpowering, and I really like the hop profile--maybe like an ESB, with pronounced bittering and not too heavy on the aroma. Mmm, tasty! Can't wait for it to carb up.
breweringbeaz
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Just brewed the whitehouse honey porter yesterday the color and wort tasted especially sweet-- will update back in two weeks when I bottle.
so due to the fact that about 3 pounds of malt was forgot and replaced with 1.5 pounds of brown sugar, as some of you have reported, it tastes just like alcohol. No honey or sweet brown sugar, just the faintest malt and taste of alcohol. Everything was great beyond that in regard to color, body, and carbonation. maybe next time I should read the recipe better. Hopefully the batch of IPA I have going now will be better.jerrodm
Well-Known Member
Bummer Ben. Yup, you can ferment just about any sugars, but it doesn't mean it's going to make a tasty drink at the end of the day. I tried to tell that to a buddy of mine who insists on adding like 6-7 lbs. of additional fermentables (table sugar, molasses, brown sugar, honey) to his ciders. They just end up tasting like weak moonshine.
But, live and learn. Do you think it would be worth it to brew something complimentary and blend them? I've done that in the past with pretty good results. I've actually got a spiced Christmas Ale right now that I'm not too happy with--it ended up WAY over spiced for some reason, and I'm thinking about doing that. In your case, you could brew a big malty amber ale, or something like that, and blend the two together to make a better beer.
Whisky makers do it all the time, why shouldn't we?
But, live and learn. Do you think it would be worth it to brew something complimentary and blend them? I've done that in the past with pretty good results. I've actually got a spiced Christmas Ale right now that I'm not too happy with--it ended up WAY over spiced for some reason, and I'm thinking about doing that. In your case, you could brew a big malty amber ale, or something like that, and blend the two together to make a better beer.
Whisky makers do it all the time, why shouldn't we?
not a bad idea. i'd brew something with an above-average amount of specialty malts, like a third of the total malt bill being a some sort of mix of biscuit, melanoidin, aromatic, C-120, etc. also consider using munich-based extract. the resulting beer should be very malty, rather sweet and of relatively lower alcohol for the amount of grains & extract you've added.
Great idea to mix it up with something complimentary however it is all in bottles. I think I will simpley need to finish drinking the rest, or possibley use it to cook with, to help me learn my lesson on reading recipes. this was batch 11 out of 12 for me. I have only had 2 botched batches out of 12 so far so my track record is still good. I did a strong brown ale that had the same 6 pound malt bill that was really great and just slightly different than the white house version. I was just at the start of my grain steeping when I noticed my mistake. Would there have been a better solution than to franticly grab the brown sugar? could i have paused the steeping to go to the store and grab my malt?
Brewskii
Well-Known Member
Just bottled today. 1.069 OG down to 1.018 FG. Today is day 14. I cold crashed it and gave it 3 days.
Man, Windsor is a weird yeast.....after the crash I had 1/2 of the Carboy crystal clear and the other half looked like Orange juice.
Man, Windsor is a weird yeast.....after the crash I had 1/2 of the Carboy crystal clear and the other half looked like Orange juice.
Here is a picture of my White House honey ale next to the White House honey porter.
I brewed these from the extract kits from Northern Brewer on 10/31/12. Left in primary for 4 weeks and bottled on 11/28/12. Left to carbonate until I put a few bottles of each in the fridge this weekend.
Overall, they are both okay beers. A honey ale isn't something I would normally drink or brew, but a friend requested some, so I figured why not. It's a bit hoppier than I was expecting, which is a good thing. I can taste the honey, but I probably wouldn't have called it honey if I didn't know it was added (I don't normally drink or eat honey).
As for the honey porter, I wish it was more porter like. It doesn't even look like a porter. Funny story about that from brew day. We brewed 5 gal of the ale and 10 gal of the porter. We got the wort cooled a bit, but wanted to grab some dinner as it was getting late, so we split them up in the buckets before running out to dinner and figured I'd pitch the yeast after coming back from dinner after it cooled all the way down. Well we come back and I had 3 unlabeled buckets I assumed based on the position of the buckets what was what, but they used different yeast, so I wanted to make sure. So I took out a sample of all three. They all looked the same. We tasted them and I was shocked that they weren't that different. But I did pick out the one that I assumed was the ale as the different one, so I pitched the different yeasts based on that.
I brewed these from the extract kits from Northern Brewer on 10/31/12. Left in primary for 4 weeks and bottled on 11/28/12. Left to carbonate until I put a few bottles of each in the fridge this weekend.
Overall, they are both okay beers. A honey ale isn't something I would normally drink or brew, but a friend requested some, so I figured why not. It's a bit hoppier than I was expecting, which is a good thing. I can taste the honey, but I probably wouldn't have called it honey if I didn't know it was added (I don't normally drink or eat honey).
As for the honey porter, I wish it was more porter like. It doesn't even look like a porter. Funny story about that from brew day. We brewed 5 gal of the ale and 10 gal of the porter. We got the wort cooled a bit, but wanted to grab some dinner as it was getting late, so we split them up in the buckets before running out to dinner and figured I'd pitch the yeast after coming back from dinner after it cooled all the way down. Well we come back and I had 3 unlabeled buckets
I assumed based on the position of the buckets what was what, but they used different yeast, so I wanted to make sure. So I took out a sample of all three. They all looked the same. We tasted them and I was shocked that they weren't that different. But I did pick out the one that I assumed was the ale as the different one, so I pitched the different yeasts based on that.
that honey ale looks really dark... weird. should be more of an amber based on other folk's pix.
DaBills
Well-Known Member
Mtnagel mine was just as dark. I didn't care for it all that much but it was ok. I didn't do a full boil maybe that's why it was so dark?
DaBills said:
Could definitely contribute, especially with extract.
Other possible factors are using older extract (particularly liquid extract, in this case) and adding all the extract early during the boil, rather than waiting to add most or all of the extract near the end of the boil.
jerrodm
Well-Known Member
Here is a picture of my White House honey ale next to the White House honey porter.
I brewed these from the extract kits from Northern Brewer on 10/31/12. Left in primary for 4 weeks and bottled on 11/28/12. Left to carbonate until I put a few bottles of each in the fridge this weekend.
Overall, they are both okay beers. A honey ale isn't something I would normally drink or brew, but a friend requested some, so I figured why not. It's a bit hoppier than I was expecting, which is a good thing. I can taste the honey, but I probably wouldn't have called it honey if I didn't know it was added (I don't normally drink or eat honey).
As for the honey porter, I wish it was more porter like. It doesn't even look like a porter. Funny story about that from brew day. We brewed 5 gal of the ale and 10 gal of the porter. We got the wort cooled a bit, but wanted to grab some dinner as it was getting late, so we split them up in the buckets before running out to dinner and figured I'd pitch the yeast after coming back from dinner after it cooled all the way down. Well we come back and I had 3 unlabeled buckets
Are you sure you didn't make the same beer twice? Those look pretty much identical to me. Do they taste the same?
More details:
I followed the NB recipe with:
Full boil (maybe had to add half gallon top up at the end).
Added 2 oz hops instead of 1.5 oz to increase bitterness.
Used yeast starter.
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