Adding Honey in the Final Minute of Boil

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OrangeCatBrewery

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I just made a Honey Weizen from Northern Brewer. The recipe called for adding 1lb of honey in the final minute. What is the best procedure for adding an ingredient for the last minute?

I removed the wort from the burner, added the honey, put the wort back on the burner, brought it back up to a boil and then counted down the minute.

Did I do it properly? Should I have added the honey while it was still boiling? Did I need to bring it back up to a boil? :confused:

My concern is that I overboiled the honey. When you remove food from an oven it still cooks before it cools down. Does wort work in the same manner?

Im sure the beer will end up fine, but any advice would be appreciated.

THANKS!!!
 
I would say add it while it was still boiling, this would help to physically mix the honey in instead of it just falling to the bottom of the pot and scorching. They most likely say to add it to the last minuet so it will mix in properly without removing too much of the honey character.
 
I usually add honey at flameout, so I'll turn off the flame and then add the honey and stir it in. Not vigorously stir either, you don't want to aerate when its that hot.

I would just add it at the last minute while the flame is on and take care to stir so that it mixes in.
 
I just brewed Dogfish Head's Midas Touch clone, and that recipe says that you should stir in the honey at strikeout, and wait 5 minutes before cooling.
Hope that helps
 
There is no need to be concerned about the honey introducing potential for infection with little to no boiling time?
 
Hello all. I've been lurking for a while, reading posts and I'm pretty impressed with the amount of sage advice dished out. So here goes to hoping someone has an answer

I'm a newbie and I'm brewing my first belgian wit. It was in the primary fermenter for about 3 days and I decided to add 1lb of honey. The guy at the supply shop said I didn't need to pasteurize since honey has a natural antibiotic. So I just added the honey straight out of the container, right into the primary fermenter. It's been 2 days since, and everything seems fine. The fermenting kicked up dramatically after adding the honey and stayed strong for about 1 day.

My question is...did I introduce bacteria? Do you all think it'll be ok? I'm guessing so...but am a bit worried because I didn't dissolve the honey in water, just sort of gooped it into the primary.

And secondly...do you think it's a good mix? Honey and a belgian wit?
 
My question is...did I introduce bacteria? Do you all think it'll be ok? I'm guessing so...but am a bit worried because I didn't dissolve the honey in water, just sort of gooped it into the primary.

You're fine. No real bacterial concern and the yeast will attack the sugars.

And secondly...do you think it's a good mix? Honey and a belgian wit?
Sure, but a bit late for this question, no? :)
 
Thanks JLem. Yep. Totally late for the question! But you know how it is. You lay awake at night thinking "was that a stupid thing that I did? I wonder if it's going to ruin the taste?"

So thanks for the comforting words!
 
You should never really have to worry about adding honey directly to the primary. They've actually found honey in Egyptian tombs that was still "good". If you're adding to the primary, there's no need to do any type of pasturization. Just wanted to throw in that little tidbit.
 
In the future it is a good idea to pasteurize briefly at 161 F. While honey has antibacterial properties, yeast can endure it. This means there might be some wild yeasts in there. They probably will not get a foothold in an active fermentation, but it doesn't hurt to do this.

It's actually not a bad idea to add the honey a little ways into primary fermentation. With a pound of honey, you are introducing a lot more glucose into the wort than you would naturally have there. With such a high concentration of glucose at pitching time, you can inadvertently trigger the crabtree effect, whereby the yeast, rather than initially focusing on the aerobic phase and putting their efforts into biomass production, will start consuming the glucose and producing ethanol right away.

This can cause a lot of problems:

- Less growth than you need, results in less yeast to do the job and poor attenuation.

- Yeast fail to use the oxygen in the wort, which can lead to some oxidation off-flavors.

- Yeasts that start out going after a lot of simple sugars will exhaust before they get to the more complex ones. The beer can end up very dextrinous and sweet.
 
I find that adding honey during the boil has done little for my beers besides add ABV. I think to really get honey flavor or aroma you would have to get it in there during primary. Just my $.02.
 
Thanks all. Kevmoron, perhaps this is why my Belgian wit is so underattenuated (46% vs 75%). It still tastes great...but weird. I had an OG of 1.037, which is low to begin with, then added the lb of honey (after about 1wk) so 1.046. I took a gravity reading before adding the lb of honey and it was at 1.020. After adding the honey, the primary fermentation really took off again with bubbles. But then a couple days later, dead. I left it for another week and again 1.020. Then took readings for 3 days. Never budged.

So maybe it was the crabtree thing?

I just bottled about 4 days ago. No explosions yet from underattenuation.

I wonder what went wrong?

Maybe next time I'll try to add the honey after 2 weeks, or something. When the FG is where I want it. ??
 
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