Honey Kolsch Recipe - Priming Sugar?

[JohnK93]

Hey all,
I'm waiting on my pilsen extract to come in and will be brewing a honey kolsch for my next batch. I'm planning on 5 lbs pilsen extract, 1 pound honey, and 1.75oz hallertau at 60 min. Wyeast 2565 Kolsch yeast. Pretty simple...I might make some of that extract a late addition, but I'll have to look into that. I've never tried that before.

Anyway, I'll be bottling the beer and will have light DME, extra light DME, pilsen DME, and corn sugar in my fridge to chose from for priming. Which would you suggest? I'm thinking that the corn sugar may be a good one to keep it light, but I'm not too sure. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
John

 

[choosybeggar]

I'd use corn sugar (or table sugar). I think honey would be ok too. And I think adding a little more pilsner extract would hurt either. So go forth and make beer

 

[JohnK93]

I'll have 6 lbs of Pilsen DME but wanted to keep it under 1.050. Brewers friend calculates 5 lbs DME and 1 lb honey to 1.048 but beersmith calculates this to 1.041 (I had to add the data for the DME...maybe I was off but I copied the other dry malts).

Thanks for the feedback,
John

 

[Calder]

5 lbs of DME in 5 gallons will give you an OG of 1.045/1.046. 1 lbs will add about 6.5 points per gallon in 5 gallons, so you should end up with an OG of roughly 1.052. When you input your DME into BeerSmith, I suspect you copied the LME gravity which is 1.036 per lb (versus 1.045/1.046 for DME.

To prime, why not take 5 to 6 ozs of your honey? I think bottling is the best time to add honey as none of the aroma escapes.

 

[JohnK93]

Calder, I did exactly what you said. The problem was that when I recognized my mistake and updated the profile for the extract, it didn't update in the recipe I was creating. (I'm not particularly impressed with this program so far...still running the trial). When I updated the dme in the recipe I got the same numbers as you.

I like the idea of a little honey flavor/aroma, but I don't want it to be a dominant flavor/aroma. I'd like it to be very subtle, and not having ever used honey before, I don't really know what to expect. Will priming with honey give a strong aroma or more subtle? Is it crazy to use 50% corn sugar and 50% honey to prime? Is it harder to calculate the carbonation with honey than with corn sugar? I would think that each brand of local honey has different amounts of sugar, but maybe the variation is negligible.

Thanks,
John

 

[Calder]

Calder, I did exactly what you said. The problem was that when I recognized my mistake and updated the profile for the extract, it didn't update in the recipe I was creating. (I'm not particularly impressed with this program so far...still running the trial). When I updated the dme in the recipe I got the same numbers as you.

I like the idea of a little honey flavor/aroma, but I don't want it to be a dominant flavor/aroma. I'd like it to be very subtle, and not having ever used honey before, I don't really know what to expect. Will priming with honey give a strong aroma or more subtle? Is it crazy to use 50% corn sugar and 50% honey to prime? Is it harder to calculate the carbonation with honey than with corn sugar? I would think that each brand of local honey has different amounts of sugar, but maybe the variation is negligible.

BeerSmith doesn't update history (which is a good thing). You would need to make the changes in the recipe itself (as you did), or delete and reload the ingredients. It took me a while to get used to the program, I didn't like it at first.

The honey flavor will not be dominant. Just prime with it. Use about one third more than you would use normal priming sugar.

 

[JohnK93]

Yeah, I can understand why you wouldn't want to update all your recipes if you were, for example, modifying the AA% of your hops. I think the functionality is great, but the interface a little lacking...gets the job done though. Anyway...

Thanks for the info about priming with honey. When you suggest to just prime with it, would you leave it out of the fermentables and use all DME in the wort? Or would you suggest I still use it as about 16% (5lb/1lb ratio) of the fermentables and also prime with it?

Thanks again,
John

 

[Calder]

Thanks for the info about priming with honey. When you suggest to just prime with it, would you leave it out of the fermentables and use all DME in the wort? Or would you suggest I still use it as about 16% (5lb/1lb ratio) of the fermentables and also prime with it?

Your recipe, your call. It's actually closer to 13% fermentables (it has less 'sugar' than a pound of DME). If you pull about half of it out and use it for priming, the main recipe only has 7%, which is not much.

 

[JohnK93]

OK, I'll stick with the full pound in the wort. Now, I've just got to figure out late extract additions and hopping