# Adding Honey to beer.



## Dan Pratt (27/12/13)

Straight up - when to add the honey?

I have read a few articles and forum threads but would like to hear from those on this forum about your experiences with adding honey to a beer. I plan to make a Honey Kolsch with the following recipe:

50% Vienna
30% Pilsner
10% Wheat
10% Pure Honey

Kolsch Yeast - fermented @ 15c

Lagered for 6-8wks @ 4c

We got a small jar of this honey from a family member - http://www.malfroysgold.com.au/honey.html


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## TimT (27/12/13)

Peak fermentation, and stir it in a bit. I discovered one reason why when I added a few hours *before* peak fermentation: overnight the honey beer bubbled out of the fermenter, onto the floor, and into the airlock! I think it might also be because then, the yeast is at its most adaptable.

A benefit of adding honey/water is, you can dilute the honey water solution until you get more or less exactly the same starting gravity as the beer wort - or, if you want to make it more alcoholic, up the overall gravity by adding more honey.


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## TimT (27/12/13)

Boil the wort down to a bit lower than you would normally - leave room for the honey. That way you can prepare a honey water solution with some clean water, and simply stir it in when the fermentation is at its peak. If you just added the honey you'd have to do quite a bit of stirring to get it to dissolve. Don't boil the honey-water to sterilise - not needed, because honey has weird natural anti-bacterial properties: partly because the environment is too viscous for bacteria to live in - and also, boiling honey-water will destroy some of the natural flavours and aromas and properties of healthy honey. (If you are really concerned about sterility - understandable! - brewers seem to advise heating the honey-water to about 66 degrees Celsius and holding it at that temp for a while).


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## elcarter (27/12/13)

I was told most of the "honey" flavor usually wont survive the fermentation the yeast use all the sugar.

Suspect to get the most out of it you would have to add just before crash chilling the fermenter or add it to the keg, depends what flavor profile your after I suppose.


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## TimT (27/12/13)

Yeast changes it all right, but it adds its own particular quality to the brew. My honey beer was a kind of herbal-honey-altbier - ale malt, a bit of crystal and chocolate malt for colour and flavour, with a fairly light hop addition for bitterness. I boiled it down to about 4 litres, adding some herbs - rosemary and thyme - right at the end - for aroma. Dry hopped with some summer hops. Added honey-water a bit later (as described above), and waited the ferment out. Didn't even bother to do a secondary ferment as I figured it would work better as a still ale - and it did. The honey added texture, a mild sweet-sourness, and a contrast to the spiciness of the hops and the gentle aromas of the herbs. Only a first, admittedly, but IMO quite nice.


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## TimT (27/12/13)

_Suspect to get the most out of it you would have to add just before crash chilling the fermenter or add it to the keg, depends what flavor profile your after I suppose._

I probably wouldn't recommend that: honey takes quite long to ferment - a few months to ferment fully. So you'd be making bottle bombs. Sure you can overpressurise a keg (not an area I know much about, maybe you coul take a 'who cares' approach here) but why compromise the beer quality?

Adding honey when you're drinking - now that's another story. It's a traditional sweetener after all, and I'd imagine fresh honey would go quite well in mulled wines, butter bers, etc.


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## Dan Pratt (27/12/13)

What im hearing is that is should somewhat mix with water and add to primary FV, would it be the same to add to secondary when the transfer occurs and about 10 points of gravity remain?


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## TimT (27/12/13)

I haven't heard of that method before. Up to you of course. I'd check out other honey Kolsch and honey beer recipes and see what they say. Maybe other users have more experience with this.


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## elcarter (27/12/13)

TimT said:


> _Suspect to get the most out of it you would have to add just before crash chilling the fermenter or add it to the keg, depends what flavor profile your after I suppose._
> 
> I probably wouldn't recommend that: honey takes quite long to ferment - a few months to ferment fully. So you'd be making bottle bombs. Sure you can overpressurise a keg (not an area I know much about, maybe you coul take a 'who cares' approach here) but why compromise the beer quality?
> 
> Adding honey when you're drinking - now that's another story. It's a traditional sweetener after all, and I'd imagine fresh honey would go quite well in mulled wines, butter bers, etc.


Apologies I don't bottle and should have warned about the bottle bombs, my mistake. 

Kegs are apparently good for 120 PSI :O the pressure relieve valve would take care of any excess just in case but not something I or anyone should rely on.

I would have thought that at 3-4 Deg and after you've racked your beer to the keg a bit of honey wouldn't make that much pressure? I could certainly be wrong happens quite often .


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## TimT (27/12/13)

An old brewing method involved mixing beers after they were fermented. This version sounds like a variation on that. One extreme, you'd end up with a sweetened Kolsch where only a small portion of the honey added has fermented. The other extreme, you'd get a lot of head and probably a fair deal of wastage. My usual method when brewing with new stuff is to read around the other recipes, do a bit of research so I can know what basic principles are involved... and how I can vary the usual techniques. I think adding at peak fermentation would produce good results, too - but I'd be interested to hear about the results after adding at end of PF, too!


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## elcarter (27/12/13)

Ah I was reading "wild brews" a while back and you just jogged my memory reading the blending the old and new Lambic beer.

The only reason I know anything about this honey thing was I was chasing a substitute for some "Honey Malt" apparently it's quite sweet and shouldn't be underestimated.

I couldn't track any down my way but it might be a option if the honey does not quite work out. 

I'd go for Tim T's recommendation at peak fermentation. Worst case a nice hint of honey but no exploding vessels or overly sweet beer. Maybe you can always add a little more later on like dry hopping?


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## TimT (27/12/13)

Alternatively - mulled beer, honey added as sweetener:
http://sweethomepolska.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/grzaniec-mulled-beer-for-cold-evenings.html


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## TimT (27/12/13)

So just imagine... brew made with prominent honey malt AND honey added during fermentation. Could be very special....


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## Dan Pratt (27/12/13)

I'm a little concerned now that if I add for secondary that it may not ferment out the sugars and become too sweet. When adding to primary timt, should I dilute with 1litre, cool and add?


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## TimT (27/12/13)

1 litre honey/water in a 23 litre batch? Yeah sounds good - honey not overwhelming the beer character. I'm still feeling my way into honey brewing - it's kind of a specialty of a specialty (brewing), so we all just have to keep playing around with ingredients and amounts until we find something that works.

My honey beer, I added about 50 ml of honey/water to a wort of about 4 litres at primary fermentation. It fermented out, but took a few months. I think it worked - but I don't know whether larger amounts of honey in a beer would with ale yeast. Then we're getting into mead territory - braggots are the meads made with honey and barley - and it's possible wine yeast might work better with those ones. More experimentation next year, I guess


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## barls (27/12/13)

My braggot fermented out in about three weeks should like you ether had unhealthy yeast or low nutrient


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## TimT (27/12/13)

Well the reading I've done says honey can take a long time to ferment. But honey is a complex sugar, with a lot of different stuff in it: the highest part of the sugar content comes down to glucose and fructose; one of these is a fast-fermenting sugar, the other not. (I can't remember which!) So what you will normally observe is a fast initial fermentation, and then a slow fermentation that can take weeks to months. (In my copy of Stephen Harrod Buhner's _Sacred Healing and Herbal Beers_, he says 12-16 weeks). Which is essentially what happens with my honey beers and meads.


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## barls (27/12/13)

From experience, my latest batch of mead was done and at terminal gravity by half way through week 3


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## menoetes (27/12/13)

I've brewed with honey twice now, though I should add that it was with kits both times. Once by adding it at the end of the hop boil which imparted a subtle burnt honey flavour to my wheat beer kit and once by adding it to my secondary when transfering it after primary had finished.

The second method gave me a stronger honey flavour in the same wheat beer kit but I had to leave it in the secondary for nearly two weeks before I felt it was safe to bottle (as TimT says it takes longer to ferment). I also found that the honey flavor fades with time in the bottle, I made the second honey wheat back in August and after trying one of the last bottles again on christmas day I could hardly taste the honey at all.

I'm not sure if brewing AG will give you a different outcome to my kit experiments and I don't know how much of the honey you want to come through. I've heard that if you want it to be a _really_ dominent flavour you can also prime with it (advice that doesn't help if you are kegging).


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## TimT (27/12/13)

I've wondered about bottle priming with honey. Might be unpredictable.

Honey fermentation times probably vary a lot. Depends on the honey - and on the brand - and on how the makers treat it (some pasteurise their honey, or adulterate it with water to give it a runny consistency) - and many other factors. Oh, and possibly boiling honey-water knocks out a few of the longer-fermenting complex sugars, too. Commercial honey, which is what most people use, tends to come from one crop (eucalyptus, clover, etc) and have a more predictable result. We have a beehive so ours is backyard - ie, very unpredictable results (and a lot of pollen and wax and other bee-related material gets into it too) and a wider range of sugars. Maybe that accounts for the difference, Barls.


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## barls (27/12/13)

Mostly what I use is ether small producer or backyard but I do agree the variety and source does make a difference.


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## Dan Pratt (28/12/13)

I am kegging the beer but will also bottle about 2 litres. Im likely to mix the 400g honey with 1.2lts of water and boil for 10 mins which should give just over 1 litre. That will then equate to just under 50mls per litre or < 16mls per glass ( 330ml glassware )

I will add the cooled honey/water mix when high krausen is formed.


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## TimT (28/12/13)

Had a bit more of a think about fermentation times of honey. The law of diminishing returns could apply - after the first few weeks the amount of sugar that the yeast concentrates on could be very low indeed.

With my honey beer I wasn't really able to check in detail - my primary fermentation vessels are typically just demijohns, since I usually ferment small batches - so I couldn't just turn a tap on or take a scoop from the top if I wanted to do a sample. However when I did a re-racking of my honey beer after a few weeks through the gravity was essentially the same as when I bottled it later. However the yeast was still active, definitely - you could see bubbles on the surface and there was always a CO2 bubble in the airlock until the last day or so (the bubbles would quicken on warm days).

I guess the remaining sugars keep a small amount of the yeast acive, (and I wonder if this has a preservative effect?) - so when we read old honey wine and beer recipes we often find recommendations that the fermentation be aged for a very long time, and comments that the character can change over time.


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## TheWiggman (27/1/15)

Feedback on this Pratty1? I intend to put some honey in my primary tonight for a honey ale recipe.


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## nvs-brews (27/1/15)

i think you got to be careful what honey you add and how much... 
just did a simple pale with about 300g of honey and yeah... its rather ummm funky..

going to leave it a while and see if it mellows out, hope so!


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## marksy (27/1/15)

Make sure its 100% honey. I always add mine 10mins left of boil. Honey flavour. Remember it adds to fermentation, so take that into account. I'm not sure about adding it to fv in boiled. Never tried that.


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## brewermp (27/1/15)

I no chill and added it after flame out in the Cube at around 80c. Will post my results here next month. Just started fermenting tonight.


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## TheWiggman (28/1/15)

This one's out of my recipe book.

Honey Ale. 20l batch, 80%eff no chill. Intended 6.2% and only 11 IBU.

3.75kg pale (20% MO, ran out of pale)
0.29kg biscuit malt
0.21kg JW light crystal
11g first gold @ 55
8g target @ whirlpool
65°C sacc rest, usual rests otherwise
Nottingham yeast
400g pasturised honey on high krausen.

I've added honey to the boil before and can't note it imparted anything outstanding the way of honey. As most texts have said, it's almost completely fermentable. By pasturising it and adding it mid-ferment (which is a recommended method I might add) I was hoping to get more character out of it.
I tried to pasturise some this morning in my mash tun. I turned the HERMS to 80°C and put some honey in a covered stainless bowl in and walked away for a few hours (kids' first day at school). Came back to find the bowl had semi-toppled and was essentially submersed. I decanted some of the liquid and had a taste, but it was clear from my drunken cleaning on the weekend I hadn't washed the PBW out of the lines and to top it off I used garden hose water instead of out of the tap water inside. There was a strange flavour about it.
Believe it or not I cut my losses and tippped it. -_- Much initiative, I feel like I'm growing up.

Am going to buy some more tonight and heat it in the jar. The 'high krausen' window is starting to close though and if I leave it another day I think it's too late.


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## TheWiggman (29/1/15)

Had another go with success last night. SG was 1.020, rehydrated Nottingham pitched on Sunday. Not a bad effort from 1.049 but probably slightly late. Oh well, too bad.

Will report back on duration of ferment and taste. I'm guessing... mid to late March.


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## TimT (29/1/15)

_I've added honey to the boil before and can't note it imparted anything outstanding the way of honey. As most texts have said, it's almost completely fermentable. By pasturising it and adding it mid-ferment (which is a recommended method I might add) I was hoping to get more character out of it._

Wiggman - why'd your book tell you to pasteurise honey? Don't bother. 1) You'll lose the volatile aromas that give the honey some character 2) it's pointless - you may render your brew *more* susceptible to infection while pasteurising; in its raw state honey has several active microbes and enzymes that are very effective preservatives 3) there's also enzymes that aid the yeast in its fermentation - eg invertase (which yeast normally produces itself to break down complex sugars).

Check out this list of honey enzymes!


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## TimT (29/1/15)

My latest honey beer was just made with a porter base, and a honey/water solution which I added throughout the fermentation to encourage the yeast to keep working.

I got the honey-water after pressing honey out of bee comb and soaking the sticky wax afterwards to remove the residual sugar. Inevitably a lot of bee parts and pollen would have got in to the honey-water too - I do this for all my mead. You might think that with all those bee parts and unpasteurised honey infections would be common but, nope. The only time I ever had an infection in one of my meads was when I tried to get a wild yeast ferment going, chucked in a whole bunch of fruit, and left it sitting around in the fermenter for a few weeks waiting for a yeast to do something.


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## brewermp (29/1/15)

Chances of a mead infection and a beer infection are quite different I thought. In other words easier to get an infection in a beer.


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## TheWiggman (29/1/15)

TimT said:


> _I've added honey to the boil before and can't note it imparted anything outstanding the way of honey. As most texts have said, it's almost completely fermentable. By pasturising it and adding it mid-ferment (which is a recommended method I might add) I was hoping to get more character out of it._
> 
> Wiggman - why'd your book tell you to pasteurise honey? Don't bother. 1) You'll lose the volatile aromas that give the honey some character 2) it's pointless - you may render your brew *more* susceptible to infection while pasteurising; in its raw state honey has several active microbes and enzymes that are very effective preservatives 3) there's also enzymes that aid the yeast in its fermentation - eg invertase (which yeast normally produces itself to break down complex sugars).
> 
> Check out this list of honey enzymes!


My book didn't say to pasteurise, it said to add during the boil. The book also mentions nothing about diacetyl rests, yeast management for lagers, crash chilling, salt adjustments, diastatic power etc. etc. so I take the gernal brewing methods with a grain of salt. I said texts because as an amatuer home brewer I have access to the internet and little else, and need to made sense of what I read.

Text 1, amongst other things, says that honey may contain wild yeast and will dry out a lot it not pasturised. It also states "... the essential rule is, if you want a lot of honey character, add diluted, heat-treated honey to the primary fermenter (more on how to heat honey later)."

Text 2 in general supports this, stating that bacteria should be eliminated and boiling it eliminates much of honey's character.

Then if you look at the comments the advice is clear - you don't need to pasteurise honey. Other advice is you need to pastuerise honey.
Comments on this forum are that you don't need to pasteurise. Other comments are that you need to (with advice from honey manufacturers stating similar reasons to the links above).

So this is all pretty useless to me. Everyone can't be right. Considering I've already boiled one lot of honey to ill effect, I'm now going the pasteurisation route because I can. That way I won't have to decide who might be right or wrong, I can using my own tastes. And I will report back.


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## TimT (30/1/15)

Yeah fair enough, homebrewers would disagree on how to open a door. At any rate adding honey during the boil/at the end of the boil is effectively same as pasteurisation, as the continuous high temperatures would be enough to zap the bacteria, wild yeast - and the delicate honey aromas - out of existence.


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## TimT (30/1/15)

Interestingly, in that linked list of honey enzymes, we find - amongst other things - amylase.

Which makes me speculate: what if you did the mash with added honey?

Would it add significantly to the starch-conversion process? Is there enough amylase to effect this sort of transformation to a significant degree?

Could this be an old-time brewing secret that assisted people when they had imperfectly roast malt/a brewing ingredient with little/no enzymes?

Is this one of the secrets to Sumerian brewing (there's some dispute over whether the recipe for bappir, the sprouted barley cakes the Sumerians made for their beer, contains 'dates' or 'honey')?


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## TheWiggman (4/2/15)

Can't comment on your amylase and mashing. I'd guess that in the quantities it would be added there wouldn't be enough present to have a marked affect on the process. Surely if it did, we'd know more about it.
Checked my SG today and it's hit 1.004 :huh:
OG was 1.049 _before_ adding 400g of honey, so this is going to be one strong drop (6.7% so far). But I tell you what... the first thing I noted was the clear honey taste which really was pleasant. Obvious and pronounced, but not overwhelming. Can't wait to keg it. I'll leave it for another week and if no change in SG, into the keg it goes.


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## slcmorro (4/2/15)

At 0 in the boil. I've used it before in this way with 1kg in a 5kg grist, and it added a great honey flavour.


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## TheWiggman (4/2/15)

slcmorro said:


> At 0 in the boil. I've used it before in this way with 1kg in a 5kg grist, and it added a great honey flavour.


Chill or no chill?


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## slcmorro (4/2/15)

TheWiggman said:


> Chill or no chill?


Chill. 30 mins with an immersion chiller at the time, down to 22c.


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## TimT (5/2/15)

Yeah my guess is amylase appears in the honey to aid bees in their digestion. (Like we have amylase in our mouths). I've no idea how much good it would do; maybe I could do an experiment sometime. 

Honey also has invertase in it - the enzyme yeast makes to help it break sugars down. Again - for bee digestion?!? I wonder if this wouldn't be an attractant for wild yeasts. It must be a delicate balance in the hive - on the one hand, preserving the honey indefinitely against microbial infection; on the other, getting it ready to become a food source for the bees.

Insect vomit is truly a wondrous thing.


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## TheWiggman (22/2/15)

Poured a glass today for an early sample.
Dry, dry dry. Quite inoffensive actually and not much of anything going on. Barely any bitterness and looking at the recipe now, that explains it. The honey is detectable but not really overt. It can sort of be detected on the palete after swallowing. Not the honey ale I was expecting.
It's along the lines of an Aussie lager actually. It's that dry and simple with just enough flavour that the glass is half empty before you know it. Just not enough going on for me to want to brew it again. Not enough honey upfront.

Would be much better if it weren't 6.7%. The alcohol doesn't overpower it but I can't enjoy it knowing that two schooners will have me arguing with walls.


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## leighaus (22/2/15)

Lol.

Trials and tribulations...

I'm keen to do a chocolate honey porter shortly... I'll continue my research it seems!


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## TimT (23/2/15)

For my latest honey ale I made successive additions of honey during later stages of the ferment to encourage the yeast to keep working, and also to hopefully preserve some of the honey character (by avoiding adding during peak ferment). I think it worked; dryness wasn't really a problem for me as the ale had quite high ABV. I didn't hop this ale, just added dandelion root (and there may have been residual fennel tastes from the yeast cake); I think the lack of hop spice/bitter/heat helped the gentler honey flavours to come through a bit.


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## TheWiggman (24/2/15)

Did you get a low ABV? I'm still trying to understand how mine got down to 1.004 with Nottingham. I don't think I buggered up my mash rests.


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## TimT (25/2/15)

Weeeeeeeeell.... impossible to calculate the ABV completely because the I didn't measure exact amount of my honey additions, and if I had I wouldn't be sure how to do the calculations to work out the sugar in the brew. But around 8-9 per cent alcohol I think, so not particularly low.

Honey is almost fully fermentable so it tends to dry beers out.

I did my brew off a yeast cake of Newcastle Ale yeast and, knowing how I'd had attenuation issues before with it, I was a little wary, and hoped it wouldn't conk out before the fermentation was completed. So everything turned out satisfactory for me.


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