Honey Basil Ale?

[adomka]

I found this on brew your own:

http://byo.com/hops/item/1736-honey-basil-ale

And wondering if anyone has tried this or something similar.
Might try to brew this but wanted some opinions first.

 

[bruteforce]

Not exactly like that, but my basil blonde is responsible for very drunk women demanding i go buy more strawberries in the middle of a dinner party.

I take 1 pound of fresh basil, steam it at 180° F for 10 minutes, then add the water and basil into secondary for 5 days. Amazing basil flavor, very easy to drink.

 

[adomka]

Not exactly like that, but my basil blonde is responsible for very drunk women demanding i go buy more strawberries in the middle of a dinner party.

I take 1 pound of fresh basil, steam it at 180° F for 10 minutes, then add the water and basil into secondary for 5 days. Amazing basil flavor, very easy to drink.

1lb thats more basil then I can get my hands on. Do you think this would do well if I uped the ibu and made it more ipa like

 

[bruteforce]

I don't think that basil and bitter go real well together, but to be honest, I've never tried it. I'd say give it a try and see what happens.

 

[adomka]

I've never had a basil based beer but I love basil as an herb so finding that recipe seemed interesting. Maybe I'll try it out and see how it is before I add extra hops. I might convert it to 1 gallon extract so I don't waste a bunch if I dont like it.

Do you have your recipe so I could compare the two and go off that?

 

[Marktic]

I brewed a honey basil pale ale back in September, while the basil was growing strong. Still have one bottle of it left. Turned out very nice. I would change my recipe slightly if I did it again, for even a bit more basil character. It came through, but very slightly, in the way it is not easily recognized as a basil beer. It was there, but only in the background.

For an 8 gallon batch, I used 2 oz of fresh basil, chopped, at 1 min left in the boil. I threw in the 2# of honey at flameout. If you can get some honey malt... I used 12oz of it which gives the beer a nice malty sweetness.

I would also keep the hops low and just on the bittering end, to allow the basil to really come through. The recipe you posted looks quite good, but is leaning towards a braggot with that much honey.

 

[bruteforce]

Recipe was basically this

FERMENTABLES:
10 lb - American - Pale 2-Row (87%)
0.5 lb - American - Caramel / Crystal 20L (4.3%)
1 lb - Cane Sugar (8.7%)

HOPS:
1 oz - Cascade, Type: Pellet, AA: 7, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 26.53

YEAST:
S05

18 oz basil in secondary for 5 days.

Honestly, a couple ounces would be plenty to get good flavor I think. I just wanted this to be a basil bomb and use up some of the extra from the garden.

 

[adomka]

I brewed a honey basil pale ale back in September, while the basil was growing strong. Still have one bottle of it left. Turned out very nice. I would change my recipe slightly if I did it again, for even a bit more basil character. It came through, but very slightly, in the way it is not easily recognized as a basil beer. It was there, but only in the background.

For an 8 gallon batch, I used 2 oz of fresh basil, chopped, at 1 min left in the boil. I threw in the 2# of honey at flameout. If you can get some honey malt... I used 12oz of it which gives the beer a nice malty sweetness.

I would also keep the hops low and just on the bittering end, to allow the basil to really come through. The recipe you posted looks quite good, but is leaning towards a braggot with that much honey.

Honey malt seems like a great addition and should add some more honey flavor. As it seems from research most of the honey is lost to fermentation. Ill taste it after primary and see if I want to use honey as the priming sugar to try and push in more honey flavors

 

[adomka]

I brewed a honey basil pale ale back in September, while the basil was growing strong. Still have one bottle of it left. Turned out very nice. I would change my recipe slightly if I did it again, for even a bit more basil character. It came through, but very slightly, in the way it is not easily recognized as a basil beer. It was there, but only in the background.

For an 8 gallon batch, I used 2 oz of fresh basil, chopped, at 1 min left in the boil. I threw in the 2# of honey at flameout. If you can get some honey malt... I used 12oz of it which gives the beer a nice malty sweetness.

I would also keep the hops low and just on the bittering end, to allow the basil to really come through. The recipe you posted looks quite good, but is leaning towards a braggot with that much honey.

Do you think 1lb of honey is too much for a 3 gallon batch (thinking of geting 1lbs of raw alfalfa honey from amazon) . I was thinking of using some for priming as well but dont know how much id need for that atm. Would I just add the honey malt to the recipe from BYO or should I make a substitution.

The recipe there also has honey go in at mash, which I dont think i will be doing and do it all at flameout and possibly priming if i dont use all of it at flameout.

 

[adomka]

4 lbs 4.0 oz Mild Malt (4.0 SRM)
4.2 oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM)
3.1 oz Wheat Malt, Bel (2.0 SRM)
2.1 oz Toasted Malt (27.0 SRM)
0.50 oz Willamette [5.50 %] - ? min
0.50 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - ? min
0.6 pkg American Ale (Wyeast Labs #1056)
12.0 oz Honey (1.0 SRM)
4 oz honey at bottling

so heres the recipe I've modified to decrease the amount of honey and added the Honey wheat to make a 3 gallon batch. Just don't know about the hops and what to use and when to add them.

Is 1 oz. of Basil too much for a 3 gallon batch?

 

[BallisticGourd]

Looks similar to one I did a few years back that worked out fairly well. If I recall, I used some hallertau for buttering to 15 or so IBU. The only thing I'd change would be to add the basil to secondary. I like the idea earlier in the thread of steaming and adding the liquid to the fermenter.

 

[Cyclman]

A friend of mine from HS brews this: http://www.pipedreambrewery.com/beers.php

It is super good.

 

[adomka]

Is adding the basil in secondary instead of flame out a big difference. Is it more for freshness and aroma at secondary?

 

[Marktic]

This is looking very good, I would not hesitate to brew that. If you did a 60 min addition of the hops, using .25oz of each cascade and willamette would give you a 20ibu beer, which would work nicely and let that basil shine. Those hops would probably be my first choice in this beer...or alternatively, I would be curious how nugget would fit in there.

So after scaling, that 1 oz of basil is just a tad more than I used, but should give a little more character without being "too much" I would think. I chose to add it to the boil rather than secondary to sanitize the basil. I was first thinking I would need to age this beer longer due to the honey and didn't want any infection causing bad guys in there, no matter how small. It didn't need much aging at all though, was wonderful at 3 weeks in the bottle. You should get more flavor and aroma from adding it into the secondary as fermentation drives away a fair amount of that. Possibly scale back on the basil if you go that route. Good idea on bottling with honey. I like it all. Let us know how it turns out!

 

[adomka]

Unfortunately they were out if Honey malt and went with a swean red caramel malt that has honey and biscuit flavors in it. And got 1oz of willarnette and thinking if doing .5 at 60 and 30. That gives 30ibu
I will also be adding some Irish moss.