Honey Pale Ale extract recipe--help me tweak it!

I bought a Honey Pale Ale extract kit from MoreBeer and will be brewing it up on Sunday. I thought I would tinker a bit with it, looking for some input.

The recipe uses 4 lbs. LME, .5 lb. DME, and 3 lbs. honey, all added at the beginning of the boil. I've read in other threads here on HBT that a long boil on the honey pretty much removes all of the honey flavor/aromas. I'd rather keep it in there if possible, so I'd like to move the honey addition to the end of the boil How long do I need to have it in there? Can I add it, say at flame-out? 5 minutes? 15?

My other question is, I've read that honey ferments out completely, leaving none of its sweetness. I'm guessing this beer will get some malti-ness from the malt extracts, but I'd like it to still have a hint of sweetness to it. After all, its a honey beer right? So how can I do that? Maybe add some lactose to it? If so, will the lactose do anything else to it such as make the beer milky or cloudy? I'm thinking maybe 4-6 ounces of lactose added late in the boil.

Thanks in advance for any input! I keyed the recipe into iBrewmaster, here it is in case anyone needs to see the rest of the recipe to give me some advice.

Jim Rossi's Honey Pale Ale
Style: American Pale Ale OG: 1.058
Type: Extract FG: 1.019
Rating: 0.0 ABV: 5.11 %
Calories: 192 IBU's: 9.75
Efficiency: 70 % Boil Size: 5.57 Gal
Color: 8.0 SRM Batch Size: 5.00 Gal
Boil Time: 60 minutes

Fermentation Steps
Name Days / Temp
Primary 7 days @ 68.0°F
Secondary 14 days @ 72.0°F
Bottle/Keg 14 days @ 74.0°F

Grains & Adjuncts
Amount Percentage Name Time Gravity
4.00 lbs 50.00 % Munton's Light LME 60 mins 1.037
0.50 lbs 6.25 % Munton's Light DME 60 mins 1.046
0.50 lbs 6.25 % Honey Malt 60 mins 1.037
3.00 lbs 37.50 % Honey 60 mins 1.035

Hops
Amount IBU's Name Time AA %
0.50 ozs 9.34 Cascade 60 mins 5.50
0.50 ozs 0.40 Cascade 1 mins 5.50

Yeasts
Amount Name Laboratory / ID
1.00 pkg English Ale White Labs 0002

Additions
Amount Name Time Stage
1.00 oz Whirlfloc Tablet 05 mins Boil

Mash Profile
(none)

Carbonation
Amount Type Beer Temp CO2 Vols
4.05 oz Corn Sugar - Bottle Carbonation 74.0°F 2.30

Notes
Steep Honey Malt as water is heating, remove at 170 degrees.

www.iBrewMaster.com Version: 2.760

i know people do it anyway but adding honey can be a crap shoot, honey malt will give you a nice honey flavor with out drying out your beer like raw honey will. unless that's what you want.

You will not have much maltiness left here. Three pounds of honey will dry that sucker out if put into the boil. My suggestion is to put one pound in 5 minutes before flameout to pastuerize. Put the other 2 pounds into the fermenter on the third or fourth day of fermentation. Add just enough water to the honey to make it fluid, heat it up to about 180F for 5-10 minutes, turn off, cover, cool, then stir in gently (gently) into fermenter with sanitized spoon. I find late addition of honey helps keep the honey taste.
Let me know how it tastes.

eastoak said:

i know people do it anyway but adding honey can be a crap shoot, honey malt will give you a nice honey flavor with out drying out your beer like raw honey will. unless that's what you want.

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Thanks! I'm guessing that's why there's honey malt in the recipe. Yeah I'm not looking for a dry beer, I'd kind of like it to have some honey-ness to it in the end, including a bit of sweetness.

tektonjp said:

You will not have much maltiness left here. Three pounds of honey will dry that sucker out if put into the boil. My suggestion is to put one pound in 5 minutes before flameout to pastuerize. Put the other 2 pounds into the fermenter on the third or fourth day of fermentation. Add just enough water to the honey to make it fluid, heat it up to about 180F for 5-10 minutes, turn off, cover, cool, then stir in gently (gently) into fermenter with sanitized spoon. I find late addition of honey helps keep the honey taste.
Let me know how it tastes.

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Thanks for the advice! From what I've read, even the late addition of honey will fully ferment out, leaving the honey fragrance but no sweetness. So any thoughts on the idea of using a little bit of lactose to keep a little sweetness in there? Is there any other non-fermentable sugar that might work better? I'd like to keep it light in color and as clear as possible, but don't mind if it has a bit of "creamy" mouthfeel. Just not sure what else the lactose will do to it other than imparting some sweetness. I see it in dark beer recipes but not in lighter ones.

Well, as a final try, search for using honey as the priming sugar. If I recall, guys have had good luck getting a honey taste. But remember,it will ferment out pretty close to 100% (can't recall exactly). If you want a sweet taste in your beer, you will need to play with a lower attenuating yeasts, since in your case you aren't mashing AG and thus shoot for a higher mash temp to leave more non-fermentable sugars. I think I know the taste you want, but I don't think you'll get it with an extract kit.

Got this one in the pot! I'm moving the honey addition to flame-out, otherwise keeping it the same as the MoreBeer recipe. My Lovely Brewing Assistant is helping

BTW thanks again everyone for your input! I may try to dial this one in better when I step up to all grain. This ones not really either mine or my wife's favorite style. We're brewing it more to have something a bit more BMC-lover friendly for when our un-enlightened friends come over. I prefer stouts and porters, she's partial to IPA's. But if I can get a more lightweight beer into the rotation here I'm hoping it will function as a gateway drug to get some of these guys on the road toward real beer

It's in the fermentor . Right next to my milk stout that's been there a week as of today.

One day after going into the FV! Never mind the mastiff attack at the end of the clip

Well this ones in the keg. My Lovely Brewing Assistant and Ruby lent a hand. One problem though, turns out my keg has a hole in it. Rookie move I should have pressure tested it first. It's been sitting around for about 15 years while my brewing hobby was on hold. I had taken everything apart to clean and sanitize, and reassembled with all new o-rings. But it turns out it has a tiny hole in the side. It's above the fluid level so I'm not leaking beer, but it won't hold CO2 pressure. I couldn't find a replacement today so it'll have to wait until tomorrow after work. I'll pick up another keg from B3 in my way home. I also kegged my milk stout today with no problems.

(I'm gonna pretend someone is reading these posts LOL...)

Well I finally found a couple of kegs to buy and got this one transfered over to a non-leaker. I think it will be OK.

First pour of this one! Despite my best efforts to screw it up it turned out very nice! I can see this keg going fast, especially with the weather getting nicer

How did the honey Flavour turn out??

crusader1612 said:

How did the honey Flavour turn out??

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It turned out great! I've since brewed it a second time, just switched to orange blossom honey and it was even better. That second keg is almost empty again so we're going to brew it again, this time maybe a 10 gallon batch. We want to divvy it into two 5 gal. Fermenters, and add peaches in one of them.

Nice one, will have to try this when it gets closer to summer time. sounds kinds of like a brew one of our commercial breweries do over this side of the world.

I never told you, but I loved looking at the pictures! I always enjoy the photos in a thread, but I don't usually comment because there isn't much to say except "nice pictures!".

So, nice pictures!