Red ale with a honey taste

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cghinds

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So I am through my 3rd batch of home brew and i wanna try some new things. I have currently done 2 batches of an american wheat and a red ale using True Brew Boil kits. I love the taste of the red ale and was just wondering if anyone had an idea as to how to add a Honey taste to it. I tried a PA that a buddy of mine made it had a honey taste to it. he wouldnt relinquish the recipe to me. So I was wondering if there was a way to add that honey taste to the red ale that I made?
 
I tried a PA that a buddy of mine made it had a honey taste to it. he wouldnt relinquish the recipe to me.

I hope this beer turns out to be the best you've done and the best your "buddy" has ever tasted. When he asks for the recipe be sure to give it to him, just add "try not to screw it up." as you hand him the notes.
 
I would say the best bet is to use honey malt. I did make a IPA with Honey added during secondary. I used Clover Honey and my LHBS clerk said that would be the best to use. I used Chinook Hops and the beer is really really good but it has a funky flavor to it, I would guess it is from the Honey, but than again might be the hops as well.

Just be careful, certain types of honey can cause of really off flavors, and adds extra time to fermentation. Don't bottle to early.
 
so if I add to the True brew kit add in the secondary? Or add in the boil? And if I add in the boil what should I use the honey in place of?
 
On my recent honey brown I added 3/4 lbs of honey with 10 min left in the boil, and am planning on adding 1/4-1/2 lbs of honey to the secondary. However, I did use more gain on this recipe to accomidate the honey flavor. Just depends on how much you like. I've added 12oz and didnt get that much honey taste, just aroma. I've added almost 32oz of honey and had a really strong sweet honey taste.
 
I do recommend honey, but be very careful to get about the most normal honey you can unless you want an extra bit of spice to it. A few recipes I have tried called for orange blossom honey to give it a slight citrus edge, basically if you think it would go well in a beer, try it out... what can be the harm?

As far as quantities go, don't use much over 2 pounds otherwise it gets to be just too overpowering. You may also want to experiment with adding more hops, different hops or hopping earlier in the boil to offset the ultra sweetness of the honey but it all just depends on what you want out of it.
 
ok so this is what id in secondary now its the true brew red ale extract kit it contains
Hopped Light Malt Extract – 1 can
Unhopped Light Malt Extract – 1 can
Melanoidin Malt Grain – 4 oz
Grain Steeping Bag
Hop Pellets – 1 oz
Ale Yeast – 1 pack
Priming Sugar – 5 oz


On top of this I added 3/4 of a pound of Muttons light malt and a pound of honey. I did everything as the instructions said, I put the priming sugar in the boil as Im going to use 1 1/4 cup of the muttons i saved as priming. I was wanting to instead pf using the Muttons using about 3 or 4 oz of honey as the priming. Would this be a bad idea being there is already a pound of honey in the brew?
 
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