Honeysuckle Brew

[mississippibred]

Soon we will have a fence full of Honeysuckle. The thought crossed my mind to use them in a brew, preferably beer. Does anyone have any recipes or experience brewing with honeysuckle? Thanks!

 

[MVKTR2]

Must be a Mississippi thing. I posted the linked thread below back when I first started brewing. Then ran into Mark Fancher the owner of Trost Und Prost homebrew shop in Tupelo when I lived up there a couple years back and he found out who I was on HBT and actually remembered the honeysuckle beer thread.

It's a keen idea for a spring/summer brew. I think it'd even work excellent in something like a barleywine which I've got 3 gallons of sitting next to me and the honeysuckles are in bloom.

I never did get around to making mine before though so I don't speak from experience. However it is doable, and in the linked thread someone even mentions a brewery in NY that does/did something along these lines.

Seems the best practice is going to be to steep in vodka/water or as most brewers would assert, dry hop with the flowers. Of course a dry hopping is going to spread wild yeast so it'll need to be consumed fairly quickly. On the flip side I think this would make a banging addition to a soured beer! Best option for avoiding the wild yeast is probably a vodka steep, but it extracts some of the ore woody/vegetable heavy flavors also. Brewing is nuance!

Good luck and hope this helps. PLEASE share if you do make the beer and let us know how it goes.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=65032

 

[MVKTR2]

If you checkout the link yooper chimes in with a link to honeysuckle wine which from all accounts is 'da bomb'! That's another option since from looking at your profile you've posted about cider only thus far. Might be more up your alley?

Where in MS are you located?

 

[sniktaw]

I made the wine that Yooper posted (Jack Keller's) last year and I really enjoyed it. I used the steeping method and thought it had a good flavor. I could see it being easily overwhelmed in a beer, so I would definitely go with something simple grain wise. I think if I were to do it personally, that I would make a gallon of the tea. Then I would brew, aiming for 4 gallons of wort instead of the usual 5, and then top up with the gallon of tea. As a side note, I let my tea sit for 2 days in the fridge instead of a few hours. The flavor got noticeably stronger, but I didn't pick up any extra astringency or anything negative.

 

[mississippibred]

I'm in Olive Branch, near Memphis. I actually have more experience with brewing beer than anything and it's my favorite to drink. However, I've made some dandelion wine (turned out pretty good) and some muscadine wine (didn't care for).

I'll check out the post. Thanks!

 

[JordanfromOK]

Back in May of 2020, I brewed an experiment mead with some steeped/boiled honeysuckle flowers in it. Primary and 2ndry. It got in bottles by October and just sat.
I'll have to check my old notebook for specifics, but I didn't think I treated the ingredient well until I popped one open a few weekends ago. Still think I can make better now. Ended up in the neighborhood of 10-12% ABV, lightly flavored, nicely carbed, and smoooooth.