honey with beer

[Jim Fehrenbach]

Stay with me folks...I am fairly new to brewing. I have been given a couplf of pounds of pure honey from a family member. I will not use this for much so I thought I should use it in a recipe. When should I throw it in (with my malt extract) or 10 to 15 minutes before boil is done? Also how much should I throw in on a 5 gallon recipe?

 

[Arneba28]

Honey goes a long way. Be Careful!!and it adds alot of gravity to your SG. If you want taste and aroma of honey add it in at flame out. If you want just taste toss it with a few minutes left in boil, be carefull not to let it settle or it will just carmalize. I have just used honey malt and not pure honey so im not sure how much to use, unless its a mead that is.

 

[Jim Fehrenbach]

Some local friends thought I should add it about 10 minutes before the end of the boil. Does this sound right? I know I dont want it in the entire length of the boil. 2 lbs is how much I have but it sounds like to much to add. What are your thoughts. This would be on a 5 gallon boil

 

[Arneba28]

2lbs is way to much I would say. What style beer is this going into? Depending on what you want the honey to do determines when you add it. The later you add it the sweeter and stronger of a honey taste and aroma there will be

 

[sonetlumiere85]

I recently brewed a honey kolsch, its a Northern brewer recipe. http://www.northernbrewer.com/docs/kis-html/1611.html

I added it at the same time as the malt and boiled for 60. It had a standard starting gravity and fermented fine to 1.010. It's in secondary right now. Short version: use 1 lb in a recipe if you don't want it to affect gravity too much, I would think.

 

[EvilTOJ]

If you add the honey during the boil it'll drive off all the flavor and aroma, essentially giving you the same effect as adding sugar i.e. all fermentables, but little else. I would add a lb during the cooling process while the beer is still warm, but not boiling hot. Honey malt is a much better alternative to actual honey if you want the aroma and taste in your beer.

 

[HP_Lovecraft]

Commercial honey-beers are not brewed with honey. The honey is added after the yeast is filtered out, to add the flavor of honey.

As mentioned above, the best bet would be to add the honey just after flame out. Most of the armatics will be intact, and the remaing heat can pastureize any bugs laying around.

To much honey and the flavor profile changes dramatically. I happen to love braggots, but the flavor is very different

 

[BrewFrick]

+1 To the later addition of the honey.

Any heat up to and over 140 will take away the honey flavor and aromas, so you could add it after you have it cooled to around 130, though I am not sure of the sanitation issues this may cause if there is other "stuff" living in the honey. If you want to wait until later you could always make a bit of must(honey-water) with it and then add that to your secondary. Another option would be to bottle with some of it and use it to carb the beer, but this would lengthen your priming time as honey doesn't ferment as easily as dextrose or malt extract would. As others have said, you will need to account for it adding a lot of alcohol to your brew, and it will not add any body while thinning it out as well.

 

[Revvy]

Almost weekly there is a brewing with honey thread on here, including some decent recipes, if you use the search forum function on here, I know you'll find a lot of great advice, recipes and information already posted.

 

[Jim Fehrenbach]

Thanks for all of the replies. I am going to brew today and I guess we will see how it turns out.