Bottling with honey for carbonation

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dangus_kahn

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Hello all,

My LHBS guy told me that I could bottle with a cup of honey instead of the normal 4 oz of corn sugar for my orange pale ale. I have read elsewhere that honey can give off flavors, take awhile to ferment out, and I don't know what kind of honey to use. Can I just use store honey like I put on my oatmeal for breakfast?

I'm trying to achieve a little bit of honey sweetness. Am I on the right track here?
 
Not really.....

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 ProBrewer Interactive - View Single Post - 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.)
 
Not only that, but you're using so little that, even if honey did leave a sweet flavor, it wouldn't really affect your batch overall. I've bottled with honey and didn't notice any difference, so go ahead if you wish.
 
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