Burnt Honey in beer?

So I stumbled across this thread and it really got me thinking,

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/medieval-burnt-mead-112163/

I saw some braggots about the site where people basically did this and then added dme, chocolate, and english hops, then called it a day.

Has anyone tried doing this in a small amount just for a beer?

My thoughts are, wouldn't this go great in say a "smoked porter?"

Start burning maybe 1# honey in the bottom of the boil kettle,
after about a half hour, start a 60 minute mash for a solid smoked porter recipe, (possibly leaving out or cut back the smoked malt)

Then instead of rehydrating the burnt black honey with water, run your wort right to your boil kettle as you normally would, boil this mess, do your hops additions etc

An example of a recipe I'm thinking about

5 gal batch

7 # 2-row
3 # Cherry wood smoked malt
10 oz chocolate malt
6. oz crystal 60
6. Oz carapils
3 oz Belgian debittered black


1lbs burnt honey right before boil
1.5 oz Pearle @ 90
.50oz Mt. Hood @ 15

Has anyone done something similar, or just have some thoughts or advice on this?

I did something like this a few weeks ago with a gluten free beer that I am trying to make for someone. I put some honey and molasses in my pot and boiled those before adding water and the sorghum. Haven't bottled yet so I can't really testify to the taste, but the wort tasted good. Here are some pictures of a bit of the process

http://onegallonbrewing.blogspot.com/2013/01/batch-012-alterna-gluten-free-brown.html

JollyIsTheRoger said:

I did something like this a few weeks ago with a gluten free beer that I am trying to make for someone. I put some honey and molasses in my pot and boiled those before adding water and the sorghum. Haven't bottled yet so I can't really testify to the taste, but the wort tasted good. Here are some pictures of a bit of the process

http://onegallonbrewing.blogspot.com/2013/01/batch-012-alterna-gluten-free-brown.html

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Awesome, looks good, I think I am going to burn the ever loving **** out of the honey in the bottom my boil kettle, was it tough to clean up?

If you put the wort in while its still hot it should just come up during the boil. If not a green scratch pad will take it off with a bit of work.

I've recommended anyone using honey in beer to caramalize it for years. Creating a mailard reaction creates unfermentables which stay behind as flavor.

For the Iron Brewer Comp I took 3rd in for the fennugreek kolsch I did it to a jar of honey with some slices of ginger and the fennugreek powder. I didn't take it to burnt, just a nice amber. But you can go all out and do it to black for a porter or stout. In fact the early porter brewers did something similar with sugar water, burning it almost black, it was called "essencia bina."

Revvy said:

I've recommended anyone using honey in beer to caramalize it for years. Creating a mailard reaction creates unfermentables which stay behind as flavor.

For the Iron Brewer Comp I took 3rd in for the fennugreek kolsch I did it to a jar of honey with some slices of ginger and the fennugreek powder. I didn't take it to burnt, just a nice amber. But you can go all out and do it to black for a porter or stout. In fact the early porter brewers did something similar with sugar water, burning it almost black, it was called "essencia bina."

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Thank you for the guidance. Being as it has not only been done, but is actually recommended, I now am no longer considering this, but officially moving it to the pipeline. I have in the past been disappointed with how honey dried out and almost seemed to "thin" a beer out (not sure if this is the proper way to describe what I mean) but with little added flavor dynamics. This may be due to poor quality honey selection and availability though. But your description of creating unfermentables to add flavor makes sense to me.

Marauder said:

Thank you for the guidance. Being as it has not only been done, but is actually recommended, I now am no longer considering this, but officially moving it to the pipeline. I have in the past been disappointed with how honey dried out and almost seemed to "thin" a beer out (not sure if this is the proper way to describe what I mean) but with little added flavor dynamics. This may be due to poor quality honey selection and availability though. But your description of creating unfermentables to add flavor makes sense to me.

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Any sugar in it's "purest" form is highly fermentable, just like white sugar is, but when you caramalize them (like when you make or buy "Belgian Candi Sugar" or use or darken honey by these means, then you leave flavor behind, and body.

Bringing this back from the dead to ask if this ever get brewed and if so, what were the results?

I was kicking around the idea of burning a pound of honey for an addition to a stout, porter, brown or a dubbel.

Yes I did end up brewing it. The problem with my recipe up there was overdoing on the smoked malt. However, if i brewed it again I wouldn't say absolutely char the honey as it was nearly impossible to scrape off the bottom of my kettle. You can get it pretty close to burnt though. I recommend Cooking the honey down to a black syrupy tar. Even with my overdoing the smoke and charring the hell out of the honey after 6 months aging and the smoke finally starting to mellow and you could tell there was a good beer hiding in there. In short cook the honey down a ton caramelizing it a lot but don't char it, it does leave a nice sweetness behind. My brother said this beer reminded him of bacon haha. The body was great on it too.