honey brewed beer? Suggestions

[CrimsonCobra]

Sooo I am curious I want to make a beer dont know if UI want Lager or Ale but i want to add a honey flavour to it suggestions and ways to proceed please

 

[progmac]

add the honey when the beer is 160F or less. IMO adding it at flameout destroys 80% or more of the honey flavor.

 

[CrimsonCobra]

ok i dont make my own wort i buy kits though

 

[bernardsmith]

What about a braggot - which is a mead that also contains malted grains. Truth be told, I made a grain beer and blended it with a clover honey (still aging) but I am pretty certain that you could have some fun making a simple ale from DME or LME and using that beer to dilute the honey (perhaps 3 or 4 lbs of honey in a gallon). If you boil the brew and add some hops and then when the wort is cool enough to add the yeast you use the wort to dilute the honey and THEN add the yeast you won't destroy the aromatics and flavor molecules of the honey

 

[progmac]

ok i dont make my own wort i buy kits though

usually the kit will have you add honey when you turn off the heat. don't add it then. wait until it has cooled to 160F, then add the honey. make sense?

 

[CrimsonCobra]

i use festa kits they dont require to be heated just kept at room temp

 

[progmac]

i use festa kits they dont require to be heated just kept at room temp

interesting. i just googled festa and they look like nice kits. you could add honey by heating maybe a pound up to around 150F with maybe a half gallon water and then let it cool. then add that to your fermenter. the volume of the honey plus water would offset an equal amount of the water typically added to your kit.

 

[CrimsonCobra]

ok that sounds like a idea umm what type of honey would I use or does it really matter?

 

[progmac]

ok that sounds like a idea umm what type of honey would I use or does it really matter?

it does matter. orange blossom is probably a good place to start. or clover.

 

[monsteroyd]

Honey malt is also good for honey flavor. Just steep a bit to make some tea and use that too. Honey however has a TON of biologically active stuff in it. It needs to be pasteurized without driving off too much flavor like stated above.

Monty

 

[CrimsonCobra]

ok so im gonna be blunt i'm brand new to the process here in every aspect made my first kit went real fast turned out great and really strong now i would like the easiest way to add the honey flavor

 

[monsteroyd]

Take some water, say a quart, heat it to 155F, add 4 oz of honey malt, let it sit for 30 minutes. Add the 'tea' yuou get from that to your kit, replacing 1 qt of water with the tea. That is called 'steeping' grains. Honey malt should really be mashed, but you can get some honey flavor from it by steeping. Honey malt is a malt made by germinating the grain in a low oxygen environment, I think. It makes the honey flavor esters. That's what you get in the tea.

Monty

 

[boydster]

Honey malt should really be mashed, but you can get some honey flavor from it by steeping.

Steeping honey malt by itself at 155 will, in fact, be mashing. It has enough diastatic power to convert itself.
/trivia

I'd go with progmac's approach and just use the honey, personally.

 

[CrimsonCobra]

ok the kit im using like i said all i really do is add the yeast let it set transfer to the carboy then bottle at the right times so if i did get the honey malt and boiled it at 155 that would in fact over do the liquad in the wort

 

[bernardsmith]

Honey may have a ton of biological debris in it but it is so concentrated that it cannot spoil so I don't know what the advantage of pasteurizing honey might be. I do know that heating honey boils off the volatile molecules so any reason that you chose say orange blossom over wildflower or alfalfa over clover is wasted. I make mead and have never heated my honey and have never had a problem with spoilage.

 

[boydster]

If you use the honey malt, you need to make the tea (steep) as described earlier, then remove the grains from the tea, then bring the temp of the tea up to 160+ for a minute or two at least. If you add water to the kit, you just use the tea as a replacement for some of the water. If you don't normally add water to the kit, it will put you over on your volume.

Using plain honey is a little bit less of a process. It will still increase your volume slightly, though. Heat the honey to 150-160 (optional), add to fermenter with the rest of your wort, add yeast.

 

[Rotgut]

When I make mead, I don't heat the honey at all. I use local raw honey (from my neighbor, so I know it's 100% raw). I boil 1 gallon of water for any other ingredients I might be using, and I mix 4 gallons of water with my honey, directly into my fermenting bucket. Once the boiled gallon is done, I dump it into the must and everything is at pitching temp. Yeast gets pitched and away it goes. I've never had any problems with it. If I have no other ingredients that need boiling, then it simplifies it - I just mix the honey in with room temp water, and pitch the yeast.

Is using honey for beer different? I brewed a braggot a couple weeks ago and used a similar method as above, except I used 2 gallons for the crystal (steep) and hops (boil), and 3 gallons mixed directly with the honey at room temp. I haven't opened up the bucket yet - but the fermentation took off like crazy over night. I used Nottingham yeast. Hope it turns out ok.