honey beer

[liftedtrucks4me]

I am looking to make a honey beer. I was going to start a pilsner and then add the honey flavoring. Can I just add regular honey to the batch? and if so how much do you add to a 5 gallon batch?

 

[cheezydemon3]

i added 2 cups and got a noticeable flavor from it, but not overpowering.

You aren't going to lager it are you?

 

[RukusDM]

I am looking to make a honey beer. I was going to start a pilsner and then add the honey flavoring. Can I just add regular honey to the batch? and if so how much do you add to a 5 gallon batch?

I just recently finished the last of a 6 Gallon batch of Honey Ale that I made. I think it was one of my best brews yet. I'm not sure what flavor profiles you expect but Honey will ferment about all the way leaving very little Honey taste. It will also make it a tad thinner and dryer.

What I noticed in my batch was that there was a very very very slight Honey start with a slight bitter finish. The bitter wasn't a hop thing or and beer issue, but more the slight bitter you get from tasting a spoonful of honey. It starts sweet but finishes with just a hint of bitter. That was what the beer had.

There are several recipes on the internet. I'm not home at the moment but if I find them I'll pass on to you.

Do a quick search on the web and here for a honey ale or honey lager. They typically use some level of honey malt, not only bee's honey.

I would definatly do the one I made again, however with the addition of a bit of honey malt. I would also start with a lager next time as you are already concidering.

 

[liftedtrucks4me]

what do you mean by lagering it?

 

[JJL]

You don't really get much honey flavor from honey. It just ferments out and will typically make the beer dryer tasting. If you want to add honey flavor, do a search for honey malt.

 

[MarzBock]

Liftedtrucks: Lagering means brewing at a lower, controlled temp. Most of us don't have proper equipment to do it right, as the usual procedure is to bring the beer down in temp a few degrees a day, over weeks, ending around 35F, and then holding it at this cold temp for up to months.

I second the use of "Honey Malt". As the others stated, using honey will not give you any honey flavor. It will just thin out the beer and make it a bit stronger and dryer.

 

[RukusDM]

what do you mean by lagering it?

Well a pilsner is fermented at lower temperatures like in the 50's. Once that is completed you do a diacetal rest for roughly 2 days in the 60's. After that, you lower the temperature into the 30's a few degrees a day.

You really need a dedicated fermenting Fridge to do a real lager. Some have used other methods to ferment colder than room temperature. Search lager and swamp cooler on this site or on the web if you don't have a dedicated fermenting fridge.

 

[bluidshay]

I have made two batches of honey beer and am on my third. It's based on the Linda's Lovely Light recipe (which includes ginger) in the Papazian book. Admittedly it calls for a lot of honey (2.5 pounds) but the result is that you can actually taste it quite a bit when it's a young beer. Something cool happens though. If you manage not to drink all the honey beer early, and you have some 3 months later, you notice that the finish is substantially drier and the honey taste is all but gone. You get that honey "finish" as one of the posters so accurately described, but there is no actual sweet taste.

My husband is actually dryhopping a pilsner at the moment in which he used 1.5 pounds of honey. I'm curious to taste the difference.

 

[AmicusCervesa]

I started a honey beer recently and read about how honey ferments out at about 75-95%, leaving almost nothing honey behind. But then i found an article on here that, scary as it was, worked wonders!
start your beer as you would, with whatever amount of honey your recipe demands
at high krausen, take a pound of honey and place it in a glass, sanitized baking dish.
put that dish in the oven at 175 degrees F for about 2 hours
this pastuerizes without boiling out the flavor
once time is up, add to about 2 cups of water that has been boiled then cooled
Confession: i added 1 pound of Light DME to this boil. Dont ask me why.
(here, youre supposed to take the SG of both wort and water/honey mix and add water to the mix until they are the same SG but who has that kind of time?!)
once the temp reaches roughly the temp of your wort, pour it in.
Done!
I was terrified opening a fermenting beer and pouring ANYTHING into that mixture. But a foaming head covered the wort (which is why i really didnt take the SG) so i had no issue with exposure and the next hour, it was bubbling like mad. a week later i moved to secondary and tasted it. OMG! I cannot describe how good it was. it was darker than i expected (dare i say honey colored?) but then again, it was only 10 days into the process. i cannot wait to give it some time, bottle and taste that beer with carbonation!