brewing with honey

[meltroha]

If I am using honey in the last 5min, do I need to worry about the flavor/quality of the honey? I've added 1lb of wildflower honey I'm a past brew at 5 minutes and I don't think it really added much of a flavor contribution, at $7.99/lb I think I could save a little switching to a grocery brand clover honey.

 

[CBMbrewer]

Unless your adding honey straight to the fermenter after primary you won't get any flavor or aroma, just dextrose. If you want good honey flavor try some honey malt.

 

[sieglere]

Boiling honey ruins its flavor. As a general rule, unfiltered and untreated honey has more flavor. I often find that cover honey has a stronger flavor than wild flour honey. (I personally prefer wild flour or orange blossom honey despite this)

I've added honey at flame out at the earliest. Honey gives some body, but mostly a winelike character

 

[joyceman]

Anyone have any experience with burnt honey in a beer. Im thinking it might be nice addition to a stout, porter, brown or dubbel.

If anyone has experience with a bochet mead, you boil the honey for 1-2 hours which gives you a dark honey with a burnt marshmellowish toffee taste.

 

[Mozart]

Without straying too far off topic, I think it's challenging to get any flavor from honey into homebrew.

The reason is that honey is pretty much 100% fermentable. Any honey you add will be converted by the yeast into alcohol, with no residual sugars left to impact the flavor in any meaningful way. This is opposed to the grains we homebrewers generally use which contain sugars that the yeast can't consume and are therefore left behind post-fermentation giving us that malty sweetness.

Adding it after fermentation is an option, but I don't know how to do that and still carbonate. The yeasties will munch on that honey just the same as they do priming sugar, eating it up until it's all gone (and if you put in too much, you could wind up with gushers or bottle bombs).

I'm a relatively new brewer, so perhaps someone will come along and correct me, and if so I'm happy to learn -- but that's my understanding.

Cheers!

 

[meltroha]

I'm looking to add something different to a Belgian blonde with brett, maybe I'll sick with candi sugar this time, for the fermentables.

 

[sieglere]

Honey is highly fermentable, but the raw stuff had things like pollen, bits of bees, small amounts of wax and stuff. So these aren't as fermentable. It doesn't add much, but it adds a bit

 

[BrewLou]

Its been mentioned already but you really are not going to get any "taste" out of using honey during a boil. It is simply used as a 100% fermentable sugar. If you are truely looking for a honey taste then I highly recommend honey malt. A dab will do ya . Doesnt take much but it really contributes (espeically aromoa) nicely.

 

[BrewLou]

Without straying too far off topic, I think it's challenging to get any flavor from honey into homebrew.

The reason is that honey is pretty much 100% fermentable. Any honey you add will be converted by the yeast into alcohol, with no residual sugars left to impact the flavor in any meaningful way. This is opposed to the grains we homebrewers generally use which contain sugars that the yeast can't consume and are therefore left behind post-fermentation giving us that malty sweetness.

Adding it after fermentation is an option, but I don't know how to do that and still carbonate. The yeasties will munch on that honey just the same as they do priming sugar, eating it up until it's all gone (and if you put in too much, you could wind up with gushers or bottle bombs).

I'm a relatively new brewer, so perhaps someone will come along and correct me, and if so I'm happy to learn -- but that's my understanding.

Cheers!

This is one of those thinking out loud (or online) kinda things so hang with me...

You could feasibly go through primary fermentation, 2ndary if you desire, boil honey in around 2 cups of water, and pour into a corny with your brew. If you have a keezer setup the cold temps should put those residual yeasties to sleep to avoid full fermentation.

To me this is way overkill though for honey taste when you could simply toss in some honey malt.