Adding Honey to a Brew

[durandf]

OK...I am starting to experiment and play around a little and deviate from recipes. I am doing a partial boil extract Brown Ale with Heather Tips and Honey. Question is when do I add the honey and about how much? Thanks everyone.

 

[duboman]

Honey should be added at flameout and without the recipe don't know for sure how much but I generally start at a lb and go from there. The honey will ferment out, you'll get some aroma and it may dry the beer a bit

 

[Golddiggie]

IF you want any honey flavor to come through, add it when the wort has been chilled to under 110-100F... If you really want to give the honey a chance to come through, add it when fermentation is slowing down. You can also prime with honey to get some of it to come through in the glass. That being said, you'll need a honey that's STRONG in flavor for it to come through. You'll also need to formulate the batch so that there's not a lot of other [heavy] flavors for it to compete with. If you don't like the sound of all that, then use some honey malt in the batch. I typically add 1/2-1# when using it in a 6.5 gallon (into fermenter) batch. IF I want more honey flavor, I'll increase that a bit more.

With the brown ale you mention, I would probably add it late in the fermentation cycle and prime with it too (if you're bottling). For priming, use about 1.25x the amount of regular priming sugar in honey. DO measure it by weight though NOT volume.

 

[durandf]

Thanks. I was thinking of adding it a the beginning of the boil and letting it go about an hour...what do you think ?

 

[likwidbliss]

I always add it at flameout. Better flavor. Boiling it for an hour you will lose flavor. A recent artcile in Brew Your Own discussed adding honey at the last five minutes of the boil.

 

[Jayhem]

I'm about to brew an American Wheat beer with honey to add flavor and ABV boost. I am going to add it at flame out per all recommendations I've read on honey.

 

[Golddiggie]

Thanks. I was thinking of adding it a the beginning of the boil and letting it go about an hour...what do you think ?

You might as well use cane sugar if you boil the honey. In my esperiences the less you heat the honey the better the flavors will be from it. I wouldn't add it until either the cooldown phase is in it's final steps or it has already been fermenting for a while.

Do what you like but you could be seriously disappointed if you don't treat the honey right.

 

[Schumed]

I use honey all time to pump my ABV...I like to add up to 3lbs. I always add towards the end of the boil 5-10. This method the honey aroma and taste barely comes out if it all..but that is usually not my goal.

I agree with the others about adding in during fermentation or even bottling if you are wanting more of a honey flavor.

Taste your honey too. All honey's taste a little different. I always use a local honey from my area.

 

[Evorgrah]

How would you go about sanitizing the honey if you were to add it to the fermenter after its been fermenting a while?

 

[opengun]

I used the recipe located in the link below and it said to add the honey with the malt. Now I'm wondering if that was the right choice.

So much to learn about brewing.

http://homebrewing.org/assets/images/PDF/AIHrecipes/OrangeHoneyAle.pdf

 

[TopherM]

Boil it in a bit of water, then cool it before adding it. Don't add it directly to an active primary fermentation. You'll want to wait until primary fermentation is complete, rack on top of the boiled then cooled honey mixture in a secondary, then let that completely ferment out.

Honey malt imparts all of the flavor of honey without all of the extra work and side effects of real honey. Just use a bit of honey malt (about 0.5 lb per 10 lbs grain bill) in your recipe next time.

 

[SuburbanBrewer]

I've always added honey at flame out. 1# of honey really won't do a ton for flavor, at least my palette can't pick it up. I usually put the container of honey in a bowl of hot water to make it pour easier. Also, honey has a ppg of .035. So in a 5 gallon batch, .007 points should be added to your OG.

 

[pelipen]

You don't need to sanitize it, but do sanitize the container just in case. I've given up on honey for flavor addition. Even a pound directly in the primary doesn't impart much flavor.
Trying honey malt next.

 

[HoppyDaze]

test

 

[MarkB]

In my (albiet) limited experience in brewing, I did a little experiment. I split a Cream Ale extract kit into two batches. First half as exactly as the recipe stated, the second half added a 16oz bottle of honey at flameout.

While it has been noted here, I definately can say that there is almost zero 'honey taste' to the 2nd batch. BUT, what it did do is (of course) raise the ABV% of the batch, and more importantly made it have a much nicer mouthfeel. It feels like such a more 'full' beer in the mouth, it really convinced me that if I'm doing a 'light' beer in the future, or any other brew I wish to do and add some more full feeling, I will certainly do it again.

I will absolutely try out the advice here (and other similar threads) about using some honey-malt in the batch. Since I'm not an all-grain brewer (YET) it isn't quite as simple, but I'm sure I'll figure it out somewhere. I also am planning on trying out priming with honey as well, because why not!

 

[pelipen]

I just did the NB cream ale AG kit, which has .75 lb honey malt less than 10% if I recall. It's fantastic, but I have no side by side without it.
So conversely, if you want the flavor and mouthfeel with low ABV: mash high and use honey malt.
I'm going to use this in a nut brown and I think it'll be great.