Honey

[Adam's Apples]

I recently posted some questions about adding honey to beer. I love honey and, after tasting a beer called 'bumble beer', I really wanted to try and impart as much honey flavour and aroma in my next brew as possible. After some suggestions from you chaps I resolved to add all of my honey at flameout stage and also add honey for the priming of the beer.

I'm gonna be kegging 4 gallons and bottling 2 gallons. I was wondering whether it would be possible to add honey to the batch I plan to bottle at the secondary stage..? Could I just boil and cool some honey and then syphon the wort onto this in the secondary? It would be interestong to compare the batches, do you think a secondary addition would have a significant affect on flavour and / or aroma?

If I don't detect enough honey flavour in the finished beer, I guess I could try finding some honey essence and adding this, also someone mentioned it is possible to get a honey malt, which could be interesting.

Any help appreciated. Cheers.

Bernie

 

[Iordz]

To be honest honey is quite barren, you could just add it to the secondary and it wouldn't ruin the beer. However, to play it safe, you should dilute the honey in some water, bring it up to 150F and hold it there for 30min to pasteurize it. Then cool it down and add it to the secondary. Expect a renewed fermentation.

 

[Adam's Apples]

Thanks Iordz

I wasn't really planning to increase the ABV, but I guess I will be adding more fermentables, so should have thought of that. I may scrap the idea and just use the honey for priming. I added 4.4lbs of honey at flameout in an effort to impart as much honey flavour and aroma as possible, but if this doesn't work I may turn to the essences + flavourings as mentioned.

It's all experimentation at the moment!

Cheers

 

[Iordz]

I think 4.4lb of honey will give you plenty flavor. It looks like you made a braggot, rather than a beer.
Have you tried mead?

 

[DeathBrewer]

honey takes some time to ferment so just make sure your attenuation is where it needs to be or you may have bottle bombs. i wouldn't bother pasteurizing it myself as i've never had a problem adding it directly to the fermenter (and i think this would give you the most flavour.)

honey ferments out almost completely so its hard to get alot of flavour from it, but 4.4 lbs might just do it!

 

[Germey]

From another thread...

One of my regular house brews uses a lot of honey (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=45985) and I did a lot of experimentation on the amount an timing of the honey addition. A summary of my observations is here...

That said, the end effect is really more mead-like which I think is different than the honey-like character in some of the sweeter IPA's. I would have to guess that that is a combo of the malt, and 90-100% late additions of very floral hops.

 

[Adam's Apples]

I think 4.4lb of honey will give you plenty flavor. It looks like you made a braggot, rather than a beer.
Have you tried mead?

Somebody else mentioned this onthe other thread. Only recently tried mead, but loved it!

Cheers

 

[Bosh]

Also try to get honey that's not especially filtered. Generally the more goop you see floating around in the honey when you buy it the better

 

[the_Roqk]

Depending on your recipe and how you brew... try the honey malt and use some honey in the secondary if you are trying to get that honey flavor to be more pronounced. I used some honey malt in a pale ale last year and a friend wanted to know if I used honey to make the beer. I told him I used honey malt (about 2 lbs) as a specialty grain for the beer. IIRC it was quite tasty.