Added 2 lbs Honey, now beer is too thin?

Okay so I had made some what of a blonde ale,
8lbs-2row
1/2lb- buscit malt
1/2lb- honey malt
1/2lb- cara foam
2lbs- Maize
2lbs- Orange Blossum Honey

I "thought" the honey was a good idea, I added it into the primary and racked the wort over it. My OG was 1.081 with the honey and now (3 weeks later) it 1.005. 10%ABV if If I did my math correctly. I just racked it into the secondary, it smells great! Just tastes thin...Almost like ( I hate to say, a cider) I was wondering if I could add some light dry malt extract or maltodexrin to add some more body or mouthfeel. Is that something that would work? If so what would be a good amount? Thanks for the help !

Try 4 ounces of maltodexrin.

A little lactose might also help.

Thanks for the help., I will try the maltodexrin and some lactose, should I heat it up in some water and dump it in or just dump it in and stir it up? Thanks!

The maltodextrin won't ferment anyway, so just wait till you get ready to bottle it, and add it with your priming sugar and stir well.

Adding that much honey will make a beer thin. Its similar to adding sugar. It ferments almost completely. A lot of alcohol in a already thin bodied blonde will thin it out more.

On a side note, that recipe looks delicious. If you carb it up so its really fizzy and drink it cold, it would probably make a great lawnmower beer.

Honey is notorious for thinning the brew. The maltodextrine will help counteract that effect.

-Tripod

Eddcculus, thanks for the help and complement, Lawnmower beer huh? I dont think I have heard of that style. Does that mean you could run a lawnmower with this beer So how about this, I add the 4 oz of maltodexrin with say 2 oz of lactose at bottleing...should I carb with DME instead of corn sugar? So that would be 3/4 cup of DME? The lactose just adds like a creamy feel to the beer correct? Thanks for all the help!!!

I second your approach to lactose, and DME over corn suger any day.

Lawnmower is just a light, lowish in Alcohol content. The idea being you could drink it on a hot day after some sort of outdoor activity, such as mowing the lawn. Supposed to be light and refreshing.

How many gallons did you make? 1.081 seems a bit high for your grain bill for a 5 gallon batch, and I can't figure out why honey would make the rest of the fermentables ferment out more than normal????? 10# of grain in a 5 gallon batch shouldn't get that low. What yeast did you use?

I am very curoius about this as I am going to brew a 10 gallon batch of Honey Blonde this weekend with a similar grain bill.

If it's 11%, maybe not a lawnmower beer? Unless you want to accidentally run over the kids, sprinklers, etc!

This is BJBrewer, this is my work login name. Anyways...its a 5 gal batch. Unless I was totally off with my calculations with the hydrometer. My Qbrew program doesnt even rate the beer at 10%ABV. I would say that if you are going to a Honey Blonde, that maybe you should use less honey or if you are giong to do a 10 gal then the it might be okay to use 2 pounds of honey. I didnt get allot of honey taste but i did get a good honey smell, could just be the 1/2 lb of honey malt I used. I will use the maltodexrin and lactose and prime with DME and hope that add some maltyness to my brew. If I had to do it again, I would leave out the honey and use a honey flavoring or additive. I also dryhopped it with 1oz of nugget. I like the nugget casue it has a really good herbal grassy smell and I used buscuit malt, honey and corn in the recipe, I felt like the beer had a "farm" theme going on. when I smelled the nugget hops I thought of horse or cow feed. so I Called it "A Dirty Corn Fed Blonde Named Honey" With a possible 10%abv I think a little agind it might just be good to take home and meet the parents! Thanks yall! :rockin:

Oh and I used plain old Muntons ale yeast, 2 packs. I was being lazy and didnt want to LHBS.

fivehoursfree said:

Lawnmower is just a light, lowish in Alcohol content. The idea being you could drink it on a hot day after some sort of outdoor activity, such as mowing the lawn. Supposed to be light and refreshing.

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A high ABV is also pretty enjoyable on a hot sunny day, when you're done with the lawnmower, you just go sit in the pool with a stupid smile on your face while saying: "Honey could you bring me another one of those please?"

-"Of course my lovely man, you've worked so hard on that lawnmower, it's the least i could do..."

Yeah that would lbe great if my wife said that. When I first started brewing my wife loved it. She said it made the house smell like bread. Now....its like "are you brewing again?" SOooo I say ..."are you going shopping again?"