How to get a honey-like flavour in beer?

I'm soon going to make my fourth beer, and I'm going to try to approximate an IPA that a local brewery makes (the excellent Jaipur IPA by the Thornbridge Brewery, for any other UK dwellers). It's very bitter and aromatic, but it also has a slight sweetness to it that tastes very like honey. The bitter and aromatic part I can do, but I don't know how to get the honey taste. As I understand it, if I add actual honey to the wort, the yeast will convert it all to alcohol, leaving a stronger but un-honeylike brew. And I really don't want hoppy rocket-fuel. So does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get a honey flavour without a big alcohol hike? Thanks, as always, in advance

Honey malt, with or without some real honey. You're right, since honey is so fermentable, it's hard to get a LOT of flavor out of it by itself, but honey malt's a form of crystal malt that really does have some of that character by itself. It's just REAL easy to overdo, so I'd be thinking along the lines of a half-pound per 5 gallons.

This might help you!

http://byo.com/feature/924.html

if you can get un-pasteurized honey, it'll have more aroma than grocery store (Sue Bee) type honey which is heat treated first.

more aroma will mean more perceived honey flavor since the nose is about 50% of your taste perception.

You can also use "natural honey" - usually sold by the jar with a hunk of honeycomb in it. While it seems counterintuitive to throw all that junk in your beer, the risk of infection is extremely low since honey is naturally resistant to almost all microbes. I'd use it, honeycomb and all, along with some honey malt.

i've used a few times and i never had good experience with honey malt. i made a honey rye once that was pretty good and had a subtle honey flavour to it. i added the honey to the primary a few hours after i pitched the yeast...i've heard adding it a few days later is even better...just account for the change in gravity and give it time to ferment out.

Just finished a Honey Wheat last week.
You can add up to one pound honey in secondary and proceed as usual.
The yeast will start ramping up again but in two weeks there will still be plenty of honey flavor left. Just remember to cut back on the priming sugar some or the bottles will over cabonated.

Hint: warm your honey (all honey is naturally sterile) in a double boiler first, this makes pouring and mixing much easier

Another subscriber to Honey Malt here!

I made a Cascade PA II Ale about 4 months ago for a friend of mine. It conditioned well for about 2 1/2 months before I could give it to him. He told me that he it had a nice honey aroma and taste to it. This is the grain bill and adjuncts that I used.

7.50 lb Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 60.00 %
3.00 lb Victory Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 24.00 %
1.00 lb Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 8.00 %
1.00 lb Vienna Malt (3.5 SRM) Grain 8.00 %
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (Dry Hop 7 days) Hops -
2.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (60 min) Hops 27.4 IBU
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] (20 min) Hops 4.2 IBU
0.33 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
1 Pkgs Nottingham (Danstar #-)

A very good tasting clean Ale!

Awesome! Thank you all for your help

I LOVE honey malt. I've used it in two brews. 1lb both times and it came through very well and not overpowering in my opinion. But I like full flavors.

One of my regular house brews uses a lot of honey (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=45985) and I did a lot of experimentation on the amount an timing of the honey addition. A summary of my observations is here...

That said, the end effect is really more mead-like which I think is different than the honey-like character in some of the sweeter IPA's. I would have to guess that that is a combo of the malt, and 90-100% late additions of very floral hops.

I added natural honey to my current batch (jar w/ honeycomb in it). It's still in the fermentor now, so I don't know how it tastes...
Some of the wax from the comb got in (I added it during the boil) and melted and floated on the top. It was a pain to get out, but kind of funny looking back on it