ZZ-Hop Light Honey Beer

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RobWalker

Well-Known Member
Joined
Nov 18, 2009
Messages
904
Reaction score
19
Location
Birmingham, England
Recipe Type
Partial Mash
Yeast
Safale S-04
Yeast Starter
-
Additional Yeast or Yeast Starter
-
Batch Size (Gallons)
5
Original Gravity
1.052
Final Gravity
1.012
Boiling Time (Minutes)
60
IBU
12
Color
7.1
Primary Fermentation (# of Days & Temp)
14
Tasting Notes
Light with little body, flowery aromatic hops and slight caramel notes.
"Zee-Zee Hop" Light Honey Bee-r

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Why brew me?

A very easy to make light beer recipe, something anybody who likes any beer will enjoy with enough hop character to be considered an "ale" while resembling a lager in lightness, as the bitterness is actually lower than the lightest style of ale. It's also quite inexpensive to make!

This is also a good introduction to partial mashing for all-extract brewers, with little consequences if you do it wrong. I make this solely to keep it kegged so I can experiment with more exciting and complicated stuff and have a good all rounder that's unique enough for me to enjoy. The honey flavour isn't very obvious, but the aftertaste it provides leaves you hankering for more.

Ingredients

4.0lb Light Dry Extract (60 min.)
0.4lb Light Dry Extract (10 min.)
2.0lb Clear Honey (10 min.)
0.5lb Crushed Amber Malt (Steep, 60 min.)

0.50oz East Kent Goldings (60 min.)
0.25oz East Kent Goldings (15 min.)

1/4 tsp Irish Moss (10 min.)
1 Packet Safale S-04 English Ale Yeast

Method

Put your crushed amber malt in a muslin/hop/grain bag. Boil 1 gallon of water to 160 degrees, then turn off the heat and put the bag into the hot water, seal, and leave for 30 minutes. The water will be a murky brown, so the flavour from the amber malt is extracted.

Transfer 1 gallon of water to a larger boiling pan and top up with 2 gallons of water. Bring this to the boil then add your ingredients - 60 minutes starts when the water starts boiling and the first ingredient is added. Adding the honey 10 minutes prior to flame out will retain the flavour.

Pour into fermentation bin and top up water to 5 gallons. Stir THOROUGHLY and take OG reading. When cool, add yeast and leave to ferment for approximately 14 days, moving to a high place ready for syphoning when fermentation is almost complete.

When clear, transfer to keg or bottle adding priming sugar, and it's good to go! Refer to Revvy's chart here for priming quantities - if you want to prime the entire batch at once, transfer to a secondary vessel and mix it in.

Using Corn Sugar (Sucrose) - 2/3 cup for bottling and 1/3 cup for Kegging.
Using Cane Sugar (Sucrose)- 2/3 cup for bottling and 1/3 cup for Kegging.
Using Brown Sugar (Sucrose)- 2/3 cup for bott! ling and 1/3 cup for Kegging.
Using Maple Syrup - 1¼ cup for bottling and 5/8 cup for Kegging.
Using Molasses - 1 cup for bottling and ½ cup for Kegging.
Using Honey - 1 cup for bottling and ½ cup for Kegging.

For non-imperial system fellows, you're looking at 70g of Cane, Brown or Corn sugar, and 150g of Maple Syrup, Molasses and Honey for kegging.

Stuff you can do creatively.

Hops - feel free to use any variety or double the amount in this recipe for an IBU rating similar to a Blonde Ale.

Honey - darker types will leave more residual honey flavour and result in a darker colour, you may also wish to add more honey when bottling and pasteurize, or use honey to prime by heating in a small amount of water, then mixing into the batch.

Malts - Honey Malt would have been my first choice, but it's unavailable in the UK. Amber supplies a little depth, but feel free to try anything!

Spice Tea - I toyed with the idea of adding Elderflower and Ginger to my priming sugar to increase the flavour, but decided against it. There's a million things that will compliment honey, so try them out!

If you make this recipe, or it's useful...

Let me know. Thanks! :)
 
Nice recipe i am interested in trying it. I will be able to get some honey malts so i plan on using that variable! maybe even a whole lb. :p


OOO i have some Tahitian vanilla beans i could use in 2ndary as well.. hmmmm :) going to use orange blossom honey for my honey.
 
I just did a version of this recipe a couple weeks ago using honey malt, orange Blossom honey and some sweet orange peel. I'm bottling tomorrow, how long did you let it age in the bottle?
 
I made a this (well, tried, had a mishap, more on that later) based around the following, I then dry hopped in a stainless steel tea ball while in the keg for a few days. Kegged 10psi @ 38F

2lbs Honey Malt
1lbs Pale Malt (2 Row)
2.75lbs light dry extract
.5oz East Kent Goldings (60min)
.25oz East Kent Goldings (15min)
.25tsp Irish Moss (10min)
2lbs Honey (10min)

OG was 1.044

Fermented with Nottingham for about a month, then kegged. No secondary. It is GREAT! It was a little light, not really any hops, a little sweet malt taste, but after I threw the tea ball in there for a few days, it picked up enough hoppiness that it was a lot better. I was originally going to have another .25lbs of extract, but I was standing holding it over a hot electric burner, and the bag melted! So I got most of it, but missed some. Beersmith says the target was supposed to be around 1.054. When I make it again, I am going to cut out the extract completely and use more honey malt, and I am going to add another .25oz hops and 1lb of honey at 5min. This is definitely one I will be making on a regular basis.
 
I may try this with citra hops. I would think that if you didn't over-do with the bittering because of the high alpha acids, the citrus flavor would compliment it a lot. Especially with the dry hop.
 
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