Adding honey to primary.

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alker12

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Anyone ever tried adding honey to the primary vessel then pouring the cooled wort into it?
 
Its what im making now a honey kolsch ( looks like a blonde ale). Bottling this friday infact. Took a small sample to try it. Tastes wonderful gave the yeast something to munch on with all that sugar. Nom nom nom
 
I've done this. The yeast demolishes the honey. I didn't get a ton of honey flavor like I thought i would but lots of alcohol. It also will make the beer a little drier tasting. Definetly worth experimenting with though.
 
From what I've read, the most effective way to use honey is to add it to the fermenter after the bulk of fermentation is complete. The rationale is that brewers yeast will perform better if you give them simple sugar after they have finished the complex sugars. I want to say I read this in Chris White and Jamil's book on Yeast.

Also - I would expect this approach to provide the best chance of retaining some flavor/aroma characteristics from the honey, but probably still pretty slim.
 
As honey is highly fermentable ( just learned this ) it all goes bye bye. But if you can grab some Home Malt from the LHBS the honey flavor will smack ya in the face. Try it out.
 
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