Caramelized Honey for color

I brewed a GF stout this weekend and in an effort to darken the color I added a batch of Bochet that I had been sitting on for a few months to the boil water.

It was made by cooking 3 lbs of honey for 8 to 10 hours in the crock pot and mixing with 1 gallon of water then fermenting with montrechet yeast. I figure the fermentation has already removed the sugars and the boil would remove most of the alcohol so I didn't have to worry about adding too much to the OG. The Bochet has no discernible sweetness to it because the honey is VERY carmelized and has a bitterness to it that reminds me of the bitterness you get from heavily roasted grains. I thought that might work well in a stout. Here is a picture of the Bochet so you can get an idea of how dark it is.

The brew came out VERY dark and I was very please with the initial taste. Here is a picture of the brew. Unfortunately it isn't such a great picture. The steam kept fogging up my phone.

I will post pictures next week when I rack to to the secondary and update on the flavor.

Can't wait to see how this turns out...might be the way I get my brews darker without the risk of adding burnt grains

Sounds like a good idea. I was thinking about using some caramelized sugar to try darkening a beer, but of course that is going to contribute a ?? amount of fermentable sugar.

What is the recipe? When did you add the honey?

dkershner said:

What is the recipe? When did you add the honey?

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I added the prepared Bochet to the boil water at the very beginning of the boil.

Here is my blog post about the brew day.

frogguruami said:

I added the prepared Bochet to the boil water at the very beginning of the boil.

Here is my blog post about the brew day.

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I am wondering if you could NOT ferment the Bochet and use it in place of some of the brown rice syrup or other fermentables. Seems like it would bring down the cost significantly.

That's what I was thinking, it seems like reinventing the wheel to ferment something, add it to wort, and ferment again. Of course, if you've already made the bochet, well...

I don't know anything about bochet, but I'm assuming that when you make it, you can take a gravity reading before you ferment to get an idea of how much sugar it has, thus have an idea of it's contribution to your wort...

I agree. I may have cut out the rice syrup solids completely but I'm sure it will turn out fine. Mine took a while to carb at +8% and had an alcohol burn for a while. Your yeast cake will have a fine layer of the chocolate powder but don't worry, the flavor sticks around...

So...adding the bochet at the beginning of the boil basically boiled off the alcohol that it had previously converted leaving only nonfermentables and color, right?

If I did it again I would not make the Bochet (I just happened to already have it since I experimented with it a few months ago), I would just add the caramelized honey. I would only replace half the rice syrup with the 3lbs of honey because a little more than 2/3 of the honey turns to non fermentable sugar after being caramelized for so long.

The Bochet had fermented completely so it added no fermentable sugar to the wort, just color and flavor.

I was going for a sweeter Imperial Stout as opposed to a drier Stout so I am prepared to wait it out! I am also going to put this on oak for a few weeks which should help smooth it out a little quicker.

frogguruami said:

I would only replace half the rice syrup with the 3lbs of honey because a little more than 2/3 of the honey turns to non fermentable sugar after being caramelized for so long.

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If this is really the case, we are probably going to have to find a way to dry this beer. 33% attenuation would be lower than any fermentable grain, and would cause very high FGs, even in relation to sweeter stouts. At the very least I would forego the lactose and maltodextrin.

Amylase might be in order to get some of those sugars back to fermentable.

Just did some quick math, and determined your beer should finish around 1.036. Not too unreasonable for a sweet stout, I thought it would be higher. This is if the honey is really only 33% fermentable.

The rest of you can adjust accordingly to either that number or what she actually finds to be the FG.

Around 8.5% ABV in case you were going to go calculate it.

dkershner said:

Just did some quick math, and determined your beer should finish around 1.036. Not too unreasonable for a sweet stout, I thought it would be higher. This is if the honey is really only 33% fermentable.

The rest of you can adjust accordingly to either that number or what she actually finds to be the FG.

Around 8.5% ABV in case you were going to go calculate it.

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Thanks for doing the math. I was just going to ride this one out and see what happens. We'll see what it finishes out at. As long as I end with a good stout for my friend then I am not overly concerned about the numbers!

Any news on this?

Honestly I am still waiting for this to clear!!! I forgot the Irish Moss in the boil and the starch haze is crazy. I think the color, once it clears will be great but I am not digging the 'sour' 'citrusy' flavor coming from the sorghum. My verdict is still out on this!!!!

frogguruami said:

Honestly I am still waiting for this to clear!!! I forgot the Irish Moss in the boil and the starch haze is crazy. I think the color, once it clears will be great but I am not digging the 'sour' 'citrusy' flavor coming from the sorghum. My verdict is still out on this!!!!

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Might want to try one of the many clarifiers out there to clean it up. No sense waiting months on beer that you could have next week.

I'm honestly not sure which are the best to use, but here's a list of possibilities:
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php?cPath=178_21_187_396

From this list the best choice (imo) is White Labs' Clarity Ferm...I'll make a post as to why later, but it's definitely GF and actually destroys any gluten it touches.

aggieotis said:

Might want to try one of the many clarifiers out there to clean it up. No sense waiting months on beer that you could have next week.

I'm honestly not sure which are the best to use, but here's a list of possibilities:
http://www.austinhomebrew.com/index.php?cPath=178_21_187_396

From this list the best choice (imo) is White Labs' Clarity Ferm...I'll make a post as to why later, but it's definitely GF and actually destroys any gluten it touches.

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Now there's something I'd like to hear about. I still wouldn't use gluten based ingredients for a gluten free beer but just in case I wanted to use a yeast that wasn't gf...

Lcasanova said:

Now there's something I'd like to hear about. I still wouldn't use gluten based ingredients for a gluten free beer but just in case I wanted to use a yeast that wasn't gf...

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Whew, that post took awhile...you can find it here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/lazy-mans-gf-beer-187412/

Has anyone else tried this? I was thinking of trying it in the next week, or two.

I made a stout this past weekend using 2 lbs of carmalized honey. When it is done i'll let you know how it turned out. FYI if you do this in the house count on getting smoked out.