NB White House Honey Ale

Hi All,

I received a NB White House kit as a gift and in looking over the recipe, there's a lot of descriptions about how sweet this beer is. I'm not a fan of very sweet things, so I'm wondering if any of you had experience with this kit? Also, any ideas about ways to change this up a little? This is how the recipe is currently:

SPECIALTY GRAIN
- 0.75 lbs English Medium Crystal Malt
- 0.5 lbs Belgian Biscuit Malt
FERMENTABLES
- 6.3 lbs Gold malt syrup (boil for 60 min)
- 1 lb Gold dry malt extract (boil for 60 min)
- 1 lb Honey (boil for 5 min)
HOPS & FLAVORINGS
- 1.5 oz East Kent Goldings (boil for 45 min)
- 1.5 oz UK Fuggles (boil for 15 min)
YEAST
- DRY YEAST (DEFAULT): Danstar Windsor Ale. Optimum temperature: 64-70°F

Right now, I'm thinking about changing up the yeast for something more attenuative (saw a lot of folks saying that the Windsor doesn't get down very far) and maybe adding an earlier bittering addition to balance things a little more.

If you want to try to get your extract even more fermentable (which will help lower the FG, thus reducing some sweetness), you can try the following. I personally havent since i do AG, but JZ has mentioned it at least once. Add your extract to your steeping water and add a lb of 2-row to your steeping grains. The extra enzymes from the 2-row can help make the extract even more fermentable. Good luck!

I have brewed it twice, once with the Northern Brewer kit and once with the Austin Hombrew kit. I prefered the NB kit, when it settled out, it was one of my more favorite beers. I did not find it overly sweet but could definitley taste the honey in the beer. I would say try it as they suggest, then adjust the next time, messing with it before you know how it will actually finish out wont give you an idea of the changes that need to be made to suit your needs. You may find it is just fine the way it is.

I didn't find the finished beer to be too sweet, but then you mileage may vary.