Adding honey

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Titch10169

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Hi all just going to brew a better brew northern brown ale kit but wanting to make it a sweet newkie brown I the kit says to add 1kg of brewing sugar but wanting to add a jar of honey so if the honey is 350g do I take the amount of sugar out to keep it to the 1kg ? I also have a 1kg of light dme can I also add this ?
 
I would take the 350g of honey you're going to add, go ahead and throw it in, then put the remaining 750g as the brewing sugar (did they say what type of sugar this is turbinado/belgian candi sugar/corn sugar/table sugar?) This will keep the gravity the same. If you can get another 750g of honey you could do 1kg of honey and completely replace the brewing sugar. You could do the 350g of honey and throw 1kg of brewing sugar in but it will bump up your gravity and dry the beer out a bit.
 
If you can use just honey I'd do that. Try it and see, though I use about 3 times that in my wheat beers as well as a small amount of honey malt.
 
Adding honey will not make the beer sweet. Honey is almost 100% fermentable so it'll really just dry out your beer. If you want sweetness from the honey I suggest using honey malt but very little. With honey malt a little seems to go a long way. You will get a little residual honey taste but all the sugars which make honey sweet will be eaten by the yeast.

I usually also add honey after a few days of initial fermentation. Honey is a very simple sugar and the yeast will go after the simple sugars first. If you wait to add it they'll go after the more complex sugars first which is what you want. If you're using a high attenuating yeast I guess it wont matter too much when you add it. It's just what I do.
 
Thanks for the replies guys on the instructions it just says brewing sugar in new to tell brewing and the few kits I've done have been thin with hardly any head so trying to find our Wat I can use to make them better if the honey won't make it sweet then is it not cheaper to use just the brewing sugar ? Also is can I stop using sugar all together and just use dme/ spray malt or do I need the sugar for alcohol content
 
Switch to DME. This is what I have done with canned kits that use booster (corn sugar).
 
...and the few kits I've done have been thin with hardly any head so trying to find our Wat I can use to make them better?...Also is can I stop using sugar all together and just use dme/ spray malt or do I need the sugar for alcohol content

If your brews seem thin, then adding sugar or honey is not the answer. They will boost the ABV but thin out the body with a lower finishing gravity. If that is what you are seeing, take out the brewing sugar and sub in 1-1.5 lbs of DME.

For head retention, I'd steep 6-8 oz of Carapils prior to your boil. Read up on steeping if you haven't done this in the past. You can get really good head retention by adding flaked barley or wheat to a beer, but you should be mashing those which is not an option for extract brewing.

BTW, I do find honey adds a SMALL amount of sweetness to a beer, even though it is almost completely fermented. I taste it at the back of the tongue, more of an aftertaste really. I add about a half lb to my Kolsch beers and I really like the result (subtle beer to begin with though). The other benefit is that it dries it out with a lower FG.
 
Wheat DME may help too. It will give the beer a bit of haze though.
 
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