schubes24
Active Member
I've decided to prime my esb with honey, just wondering how much to use for a 5 gal batch and what i need to do ( boil it with water)?
I've decided to prime my esb with honey, just wondering how much to use for a 5 gal batch and what i need to do ( boil it with water)?
jjinx, you owe me a coke.
It depends on how much carbonation you want. A half cup of honey will give you pretty much the same amount of carbonation as 2/3 cup of cane sugar or 3/4 cup of corn sugar. You can adjust from there.
If you boil it, you'll largely (if not completely) lose the aroma and flavor.
but most of the flavor will go cuz honey is nearly 100% fermentable regardless of boiling or not
So why use honey?
So why use honey?
I thought of using raw wildflower honey in wheat beer with zest or blueberries. The raw version is not only un-pasteurized,it isn't heated &/or in water to get more out of the comb. I used to work with bee keepers that told of these things.
So,the raw version should be of more consistent quality. Not to mention better utilized in fermentation,imo.
Honey has natural antimicrobial qualities and doesn't really need to be heated, especially when added to something that already has an unfriendly bacterial environment like already fermented beer. It doesn't make it less fermentable to heat it, but it will drive off some of the aroma and flavor compounds. Similar to how we add flavor and aroma hops at the end of the boil and get very little to no flavor/aroma character from bittering additions at the start of the boil.
A scale is ALWAYS the best way to measure ANY priming sugar. I don't care what you're priming with.
As for referencing Sierra Nevada... WGAF?? I don't think I've had ONE of their brews that I actually cared for... At all. Many of us brew our own because we don't like what the commercial breweries are offering. Would you only brew what BMC makes, or what wins awards??
Using honey in just one batch and not liking, then blaming the honey for why you didn't like it seems more than a bit foolish to me. I've used honey in 4 out of 9 batches, and haven't had one that I didn't like.
I don't know what YOU'RE getting for honey, but what I've used has worked for priming, as well as in the brews while fermenting with solid results. Yes, it will ferment more complete than DME/LME, but if you factor that in when you build the recipe it's a zero issue. Just tossing it in for the hell of it without figuring out what it will do is more than foolish.
For priming, you're not going to get something any drier than if you primed with regular sugar, honey, cane sugar, etc. As long as it is a fermentable sugar, you can prime with it. You just need to figure out how much to use to get your goal. As for thinking honey is too unstable to prime with... You must have been using some real crappy honey. Or you have a very narrow CO2 volumes range that you like.
Personally, the first time I brew a recipe, I will aim more for the middle CO2 volume range for a style. The next time I brew it, I can adjust that off of the first brewing. That's all part of the process.
BTW, getting consistent results in priming by using cup measurements is far too unreliable. IF you go by weight, then you will be able to get the same level on a recipe time and again. Look at it this way, do the people brewing for a living use volume measurements for dry ingredients?? The ONLY thing I'll measure by volume in a batch is water. Even there, if I had a scale that went high enough, I'd go by weight.
In the end, I'm NOT going to tell the OP to not prime with honey. I will advise weighing it, and making sure you factor for it properly (the linked site put honey at roughly 1.25x the corn sugar amount).
Every time I've primed with honey, I would just mix in warm/heated water to get it to dissolve and mix it in. Solid results every time. Knowing HOW to handle different ingredients makes all the difference in the world...
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