Adding honey to American light brewers best kit

Well, I'm a new brewer and I'm definitely jumping into this great hobby head first! I absolutely wish I would have found this hobby years ago! And as with any hobby, if you wish to be fully dedicated you must keep the Wife happy. With that being said I am making her an American Light beer with the Brewers best kit. Well of course she isn't just happy with that, now she want me to add honey to the mix. So the question is, will that combo come out OK? Also when should I add it? I was just going to buy a 3lb or so from the store and add a day or so before bottling time. I was gonna do a wheat beer with it but she like the light stuff. All help would be greatly appreciated! By the way I've learned so much from this AWESOME website! Thanks!

Honey doesn't add much in flavor. It ferments completly and makes the beer drier tasting. If you add it right before bottling you will end up with bombs! That is a lot of sugar!

If this is your first few batches, tell her to relax and you will be able to "play around" after you get some of your process worked out and understand what's going on....

all that adding honey will do is dry the beer out....

When you add honey you are actually doing more to boost the ABV and dry the beer out, than to actually get any honey flavor.

That's the thing with people adding honey to beer, they really AREN'T getting much honey flavor in their beer, because it is fermenting away to alcohol, like making mead.

Which unless you kill fermentation and back sweeten with honey that won't ferment, really doesn't have that much of a sweet honey flavor.

To get a real honey flavor, use the darkest you can find, with the most concentration of flavor, or even better, use Gambrinus honey malt.

So if you put a lot of honey in, it will have the same basic affect as adding table sugar to it...it's going to dry out and thin the beer.

If people want a real honey taste then ad some honey malt to your grainbill you will be surprised...it will taste like most people want honey beers to taste.

In bottling the same thing is going to happen....only a little bit of "honey flavor" is going to come through, because most of it will ferment out. And it is really hard to control how much flavor is going to be left over. One thing to consider would be to use the darkest honey possible, so there is unfermentable left behind.

(Like bottling with brown sugar or even mollasses.)

I did an amazing Belgian Dark Strong with a couple pounds of Honey malt, and it was like what a honey beer SHOULD taste like.

I firmly believe initially that you shoudl brew your first few kits, and recipes "as is" not messing willy nilly with them til you understand the process...

And rather than throwing fruit or honey into an established kit recipe...that if you want something else in the beer, then buy a kit with that ingredient already in it. THEN the recipe will ALREADY BE BALANCED to accept that ingredient....

Beer recipes are a balance...and if you add to one variable, that will affect other parts of it...For example if you decide to raise the gravity of a balnced beer...a beer where the hops balance out the sweetness...and you raise the maltniness of it without alaso balancing the hops, then your beer may end up being way too cloyingly sweet.

I wouldn't be adding honey just before bottling. Honey is about 95% fermentable, meaning the yeast are going to go to work on it. That being said you are probably going to be left with bottle bombs unless you calculated just the right amount of honey to replace the priming sugar you'd usually use for bottling.

Usually you'll add honey at the last part of the initial boil or during high kraeusen (if properly sanitized) so that the yeast can convert most of the honey sugars. Adding honey right before bottling might seem like a good way to just add honey flavor to the beer, but you're really just adding more sugar for the yeast to work on and it will likely produce explosive results and a higher alcohol content and drier beer.

If your beer is already going and is a week or two in, I'd say forgo the honey this time around and think about adding honey for the next brew.

Wow! This website is great! Thanks for all the help and replies! I guess ill just pass and make the kit how it is. Again thanks for all the replies. I will never listen to the people on the streets, instead I will come here to this forum and get real advise from real home brewers! I'm on a mission to be a great home brewer one day! I just cant explain how excited I am over my new obsession.

mrcoldone said:

Wow! This website is great! Thanks for all the help and replies! I guess ill just pass and make the kit how it is. Again thanks for all the replies. I will never listen to the people on the streets, instead I will come here to this forum and get real advise from real home brewers! I'm on a mission to be a great home brewer one day! I just cant explain how excited I am over my new obsession.

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My take on this is that there is a difference between true experimentation and throwing things together "willy nilly." I have noticed on here is that a lot of noobs think what they are doing is experimentation, when in reality they are just throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and hoping it sticks.

Throwing a bunch of stuff in your fermenter and seeing what you get at the end, and ending up making an "is my beer ruined" thread is not the same thing as experimenting.

To me, in order to experiment truly, you have to have an understanding of the fundamentals. You have to know how the process works somewhat. You have to have an understanding of how different ingredients or processes affect the final product. You may even need to know, or at least understand something about beer styles, and what goes into making one beer a Porter and another a pale ale. And where your concoction will fall on the continuoum.

To me it's like cooking or even Jazz. But going back to the cooking analogy. Coming up with a balanced and tasty recipe takes some understanding of things...just like cooking...dumping a cup of salt will more than likely ruin a recipe...so if you cook, you KNOW not to do that...it's the same with brewing...you get an idea with experience and looking at recipes, brewing and playing with software how things work..what flavors work with each other, etc...

That to me is the essence of creating...I have gotten to a point where I understand what I am doing, I get how ingredients work or don't work with each other, so I am not just throwing a bunch of stuff together to see what I get.

I have an idea of what I want it to taste like, and my challenge then is to get the right combination of ingredients to match what is in my head. That's also pretty much how I come up with new food recipes as well.

You'll get there....a LOT sooner, if you focus on the fundamentals, and get your processes in order...rather than just playing around.

You'll also save more money that way.....

One more question about this honey deal..There is a video on youtube with a guy adding honey right when he pours his wart in the primary. He does it with muntins American light and honey. Is this wrong also? I guess that's where we kind of got this idea. Thanks again! heres the link [ame]http://www.youtube.com/user/mieses2pieces#p/u/34/kNCpgbE7VSs[/ame]

mrcoldone said:

One more question about this honey deal..There is a video on youtube with a guy adding honey right when he pours his wart in the primary. He does it with muntins American light LME and honey. Is this wrong also? I guess that's where we kind of got this idea. Thanks again! heres the link http://www.youtube.com/user/mieses2pieces#p/u/34/kNCpgbE7VSs

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You did notice he began his video by saying.."I'm going to try sumthin new today...."

That's all I needed to see. I stand behind what I wrote.

A youtubevideo of an experiment is still an experiment.

You want to make good beer.....take our advice...

you wanna make honeybeer right now? Order a kit....and brew that.

I will absolutely take your advise! I was just wondering about that. I definitely wasn't questioning your home brew skills, I was just showing you my respect of the process and letting you know I'm not just trying to throw things together. Again thanks alot for even reading my thread and taking time to give your input, as it is greatly appreciated! I also want to apologise as I was reading through the threads, I found a ton on honey beer. I will be sure to do this before I post another thread. Im just trying not to ruin a great beer.

By the way I think I found just what I'm looking for. It provides me with a darker beer and her with the sweeter side. Anyone know if this is a good one? And something a beginner like myself could make? http://www.homebrewers.com/product/ALP1019/Flagstaff_Honey_Brown_Beer_Kit.html

I have heard rave reviews of this beer.. I have not tasted it personally but have heard it tastes similar to Dundee's

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/produ...d=324&osCsid=18e212f892683321d0c3661a9a7b90a3

MStudinski said:

I have heard rave reviews of this beer.. I have not tasted it personally but have heard it tastes similar to Dundee's

http://www.austinhomebrew.com/produ...d=324&osCsid=18e212f892683321d0c3661a9a7b90a3

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That one sounds great! But I think I'm just a little intimidated by the mash kits at this point. I'm gonna move slowly so I don't mess anything up. I wanna have some great beer to show off to the family during the holidays. Thanks for the input.

Do the Extract version then... drop it down and change it to extract....

I prefer DME over LME as well.. It's worth the 2 bucks not to get all sticky... haha... I'm not the cleanest brewer.. I tend to get LME all over myself.. not really sure why..

Your kit may give you just what you are looking for.
Any kit with an extract base and steeping grains is a good way to start.

+1 on using DME rather than LME whenever you have the choice, but LME is fine. It's just a preference thing for me.

I'd reccomend doing a few kits like this to start and read up on the basics at http://www.howtobrew.com/ or Charlie Papazian's book.

Once you understand the basics, you will be able to play around with ingredients on your own without using a pre packaged kit. You will never run out of things to learn when it comes to homebrewing. Best of luck!

MStudinski said:

Do the Extract version then... drop it down and change it to extract....

I prefer DME over LME as well.. It's worth the 2 bucks not to get all sticky... haha... I'm not the cleanest brewer.. I tend to get LME all over myself.. not really sure why..

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You know what, I didn't even see that you could change it. I was having a couple beer myself last night. hahaha. I'm gonna order that kind and try it out. So I should get the DME and what kind of yeast would you suggest? Again I'm new at this. Thanks

I'd keep it simple for now.. I'm only 3 kits in and I'm still moving slowly.. My next batch I'll be adding liquid yeast over dry for the first time... If I were you I'd go for the powered yeast for the first few... Then graduate to full boil/liquid yeast and eventually all grain...

I just picked me up a 6 pack of Dundees. We love this beer so I placed the order. Thanks for all the help.

mrcoldone said:

I just picked me up a 6 pack of Dundees. We love this beer so I placed the order. Thanks for all the help.

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Good luck.. Let us know how it turns out