Feedback on proposed Honey Wheat recipe

I created this recipe from posts on this site and looking at other recipes. This is the first wheat beer I have done so I am really clueless. Any honest criticism will be appreciated.

I'm looking to make a wheat beer with minimal undertones of honey and citrus. Not really looking to go too high on the IBU scale but I do want to balance the sweet out.

Honey Wheat Ale
1 lb Carmel Malt Grains (Steeped @ 160 for 20 Mins)

6 Lbs Plain Wheat DME

1 oz Hallertau Hersbrucker pellets (60 Mins)
1 oz Hallertau Hersbrucker pellets (30 Mins)
1 oz Amarillo pellets (5 Mins)
2 Lbs Orange Blossom Honey (1 Min)
White Labs 380 Hefeweizen IV Yeast
Ferment: 2 Weeks
Secondary: 2 Weeks
Bottle Condition: 2 Weeks

Thanks

Without knowing the AAU on your hops, it's hard to say for sure, but it looks like you're a bit heavy handed on those hops for the style. Others may disagree, but maybe cut the bittering hops by 50%.

TopDog said:

Without knowing the AAU on your hops, it's hard to say for sure, but it looks like you're a bit heavy handed on those hops for the style. Others may disagree, but maybe cut the bittering hops by 50%.

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I haven't thrown this into beersmith yet but I may cut out the second ounce of Hallertau. Or take it even further by splitting the remaining ounce between the 30 min intervals.

I generally do 1oz at 60, .5oz at 30 and .5oz at flame out for my hops when making wheat beers.

I'd back off to a pound of honey and add it directly to the primary at high krausen.

Coastarine said:

I'd back off to a pound of honey and add it directly to the primary at high krausen.

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I know this has been debated like crazy on this site but I get real nervous about adding anything to my primary or secondary without sanitizing it.

I know if you boil the honey it kills the flavor but I guess my question is what are the chances the honey will cause an infection? That was my thought behind giving it a quick boil at the end and bumping up the volume of honey.

Hilbert said:

I know this has been debated like crazy on this site but I get real nervous about adding anything to my primary or secondary without sanitizing it.

I know if you boil the honey it kills the flavor but I guess my question is what are the chances the honey will cause an infection? That was my thought behind giving it a quick boil at the end and bumping up the volume of honey.

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I've added honey to the primary of two beers with no ill-effects. Honestly though I've come to the conclusion that honey in beer just isn't that great. Maybe it is better to boil off the flavors/aromas. But if you do want that, in the primary is the way to get it IMO. Adding it at high krausen gives any nasties in the honey the minimum chance of flourishing while giving the yeast the best opportunity to ferment the sugar.

Coastarine said:

Honestly though I've come to the conclusion that honey in beer just isn't that great.

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I am right there with you on that one! I have added it to the boil a couple of times and got no effect. I added it to the primary after 2-3 days on my last 2 brews and all I get is extra fermentation dropping my FG lower making a thinner beer.

Two pounds of honey is awful expensive to get nothing out of it.

I wonder if you could add it to your bottling bucket somehow? If you heated it to 140-150*, would it get thinner and be pasteurized, then you could mix it in with the beer in a bottling bucket? I just can't figure out how to get honey flavor.

Well I got flavor from adding to the primary, I've just decided that the flavor isn't all that great. Some of you are thinking "That's just retarded, how could the flavor of honey not be good! Everyone loves honey!" and that's true, everyone does love honey, but once you ferment alllll of the sugar out of it, what you are left with just ain't that great. Granted, I used plain old clover honey, not exactly stuff you'd want to make mead with (I think...) so maybe if I went for the pricey stuff it would be better, but I'm pretty much done messing around with honey.

Coastarine said:

Well I got flavor from adding to the primary, I've just decided that the flavor isn't all that great. everyone does love honey, but once you ferment alllll of the sugar out of it, what you are left with just ain't that great.

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Interesting. Now I am wondering if I shouldn't put the honey in at all. I've never used honey in any of my beers yet so I'm unsure what the flavor output will be.

It's not terrible, and really I think my opinion is the minority. If you're curious, give it a shot.

I threw the recipe into BeerSmith and played with the hops a bit.

After looking at a bunch of recipes it seems like most only have 2 oz of hops in them. When I did this the IBU came out to 13.7% which just seemed too low for this style.

Here's what I came up with. Please let me know if this much hops is going to be bad or if anyone has had good sucess with 3 oz of hops.

Type: Extract
Date: 2/7/2009
Batch Size: 5.00 gal

Ingredients

Amount Item Type % or IBU
6 lbs Wheat Dry Extract (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 75.00 %
1 lbs Caramel Wheat Malt (46.0 SRM) Grain 12.50 %
1.00 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker [4.00 %] (60 min) Hops 9.6 IBU
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold [8.50 %] (5 min) Hops 4.1 IBU
1.00 oz Hallertauer Hersbrucker [4.00 %] (5 min) Hops 1.9 IBU
0.25 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 15.0 min) Misc
1 lbs Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 12.50 %
1 Pkgs Hefeweizen IV Ale (White Labs #WLP380) [Starter 35 ml] Yeast-Wheat

Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 6.07 %
Bitterness: 15.6 IBU
Est Color: 11.2 SRM

Just my opinion...
I look for wheats or wits not to have a strong hop flavor or bitterness. I think you are looking for other flavor in a wheat or wit. I just use 1 oz in a belgian white. The amarillo might be strong. Check byo.com, it has a hop chart with recommendations by style.

Thanks
That helps

Hilbert said:

Interesting. Now I am wondering if I shouldn't put the honey in at all. I've never used honey in any of my beers yet so I'm unsure what the flavor output will be.

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I recently went for broke and put 3.5lbs of honey in a 1.037 wheat beer after the initial fermentation had stopped.It fermented down to 1.002 F.G. and tastes like yeast and hot alcohol.This was my last time to brew with honey.I believe all it does is add alcohol and dries the hell out of your brew.My $.02

RCCOLA said:

I recently went for broke and put 3.5lbs of honey in a 1.037 wheat beer after the initial fermentation had stopped.

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Thats about a $15-$20 mistake. Ouch. Thanks for sharing your results.

Fat Guy Brewing said:

Thats about a $15-$20 mistake. Ouch. Thanks for sharing your results.

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You can't always hit one out of the park.I did this to go to extreme measures to see if honey flavor could end up in the finished product.Now I'm going to add a pound of lactose and blueberry flavoring at bottling to see if I can salvage this mess.If anyone has any other good ideas about what to do with this -I'm all ears.

I had brewed up a honey wheat about 4 months ago.. I added 2 lbs. of honey at 30min. I was told that it was to bring out more honey flavor in the final product. The beer turned out great allot of people loved it... At first it tasted allot like wine and was really dry but after about a month in the bottle it mellowed out.