Why Honey for Priming?

Most G/F recipes call for honey for priming. Why is this? Is it to balance the bitterness from sorghum? Because I can't imagine that dextrose has any gluten in it (and it's pretty sweet).

I have 8 ounces of honey ready to go (I will be bottling this weekend) but I also have plenty of dextrose and could use that too.

Just wondering.

Because most dextrose in the US is manufactured from cornstarch. Corn contains gluten. Is it likely there is any gluten in dextrose? No, but people are being careful.

Edit: See Androshen's correction

The sugar in honey, ferments out quite completely from what I recall, so I doubt it would add any sweetness.

+1 to david 42

david_42 said:

Because most dextrose in the US is manufactured from cornstarch. Corn contains gluten. Is it likely there is any gluten in dextrose? No, but people are being careful.

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From: http://www.celiac.com/articles/186/...ease-Who-are-on-a-Gluten-Free-Diet/Page1.html



The term gluten in reference to the cohesive, elastic protein mass remaining after starch is washed from a dough goes back to Beccari in 1745. Strictly speaking, gluten is found only in wheat because it is difficult to wash a cohesive protein mass even from rye, the closest relative to wheat, let alone from barley or oats or anything else. Unfortunately, a misuse of the term by the corn industry has become common in recent years. It has become fairly common to call corn storage proteins corn gluten. Personally, I think there is no justification for such usage. Corn may contain prolamins, as does wheat, but not gluten.

When it comes to celiac disease, a similar corruption of the term has become very common. There are certain related proteins in wheat, rye, and barley that give rise to particular peptides during digestion that are capable of triggering the responses typical of celiac disease. Only in the case of wheat can these be strictly considered to be derived from the gluten proteins. But for lack of a suitable term, patients and their physicians began speaking of gluten-free or gluten-containing foods. People ask me, How much gluten is there in quinoa? I have to translate this into, Are there any harmful peptide sequences in the proteins of quinoa? There is nothing in quinoa that is like gluten prepared from a wheat flour dough, which has an unusual, perhaps unique, viscoelastic character.

In any case, as far as we know, corn does not seem to cause harm to celiac patients. Corn has not been studied in the extensive way that wheat has in relation to celiac disease, but for 40+ years patients and their physicians have seemed to agree that corn is OK. The sequences in the corn zein (prolamin) fraction are suspicious, but they do differ in an apparently crucial way from the protein sequences of the wheat gliadin (prolamin) fraction. There have been no modern biopsy-based studies of the effects of purified corn proteins on the celiac intestine as there have been for wheat, but the mass of evidence still seems to point in the direction of corn being safe for celiac patients.

Androshen said:

From: http://www.celiac.com/articles/186/...ease-Who-are-on-a-Gluten-Free-Diet/Page1.html



The term gluten in reference to the cohesive, elastic protein mass remaining after starch is washed from a dough goes back to Beccari in 1745. Strictly speaking, gluten is found only in wheat...

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This is what I thought - my nephew has Celiac and eats corn based foods all the time. However, I guess there is some potential risk of gluten dinding its way into dextrose from processing, so I will go ahead and use the honey. It's not going anywhere otherwise.

Androshen - thanks for the correction. Obliviously, my source is one of those being sloppy with the term.

How much honey would you use for bottle priming?
Do you add it straight or mix it with water and then add the beer?

Honey is about 85% fermentable, so you could use the same weight as dextrose and just be a little high.

If you don't dilute it before adding, getting it mixed in is very difficult. (based on mead making)

personally i like just plain table sugar in a little heated water for priming, it seems to ferment out a little quicker and i've never been able to tell a taste difference. i wouldn't hesitate to use priming sugar if you have it either though, just adjust your volume to match the type of sugar you're using, this is my tool for that http://www.brewheads.com/priming.php Ymmv but i'll save my honey for other things

Actually I was wondering how much honey to use for each bottle?

How much honey should be used for a 5-5.5 gallon batch? 8oz?

DavidSteel said:

How much honey should be used for a 5-5.5 gallon batch? 8oz?

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Its hard to say as there is no rule for how much honey will contribute per ounce, it will vary by the honey in question. Then of course different styles of beer should have different levels of carbonation. Wild guess, thats probably going to give you about 3 volumes of co2. That'd be way high for something like a bitter or scottish ale, a little high for a lager or light ale, but could be spot on for a lambic or wheat beer. What style beer are you making?

I made a Belgian Tripel with LOTS of dextrose in the grain bill for my GF GF. The keg is almost gone...so I'd say it's safe. I did some research beforehand, and the only dextrose that has gluten appears to not be sold in the US.

I simply used an eight ounce bottle of honey and it went fine. I had no other use for it - no one here uses it for anything, so otherwise it would have just sat.

I can't tell if it affected the flavor because I've never made a G/F beer before, and I've never used honey as a primer before, so I have no basis for comparison. But I do think that the final product tastes a bit "honey-ish."