Carbonating with honey

[marvin_yorke]

Any advices on this? Does it actually make sense in terms of giving the beer a little of honey flavor and/or aroma?
I'm making a blonde ale, quite light both in color and alcohol, and my thought was that giving it some honeylike taste won't hurt. But as I don't have honey malt, I want to try doing it with actual honey. What do you think about it?
Could I have any problems with it or would my beer benefit from it at all? I saw some posts where guys were saying that they're carbonating porters or stouts with honey and it seems not to make any difference in taste, but in lighter beer the effect could be more evident, am I right?

 

[sputnam]

i've not done it myself due to the fact that everyone tells me the honey flavor gets fermented out. I added flavored whiskey (cherry, and toasted caramel) to beer in a secondary. You can tell there is some liquor in it but you can not tell what flavor. It CAN be done but i wouldn't get my hopes up. I've got a blond conditioning right now with 4% honey malt, glad to hear someone else had the same idea.

 

[LexusChris]

I just finished a honey blonde and it came out really well using honey post boil only, and carbing by normal methods.

IMHO, if you want honey flavor, just add 1# honey per 5-gallons of beer, in the primary or secondary. Let it ferment. You will get a real nice honey character to the beer. Then, keg/bottle and carb as you normally would.

If you try to carb the beer with honey, you run into several issues. Not all honey is the same density of sugar.. You could easily under carb or over carb. Also, the little honey you would need to carb an ale to 2.4 volumes is not enough to give you that honey character you are looking for.

If you want the honey flavor, add the honey to the fermenter. Use corn sugar or bottled CO2 for carbing the beer.

If you don't care about the honey flavor, then don't bother using honey for carbing .. use corn sugar. Its cheaper and easier to get consistent results.

Happy carbing!
--LexusChris