Adding Honey to beer.

[Dan Pratt]

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

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[TimT]

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).

 

[elcarter]

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.

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[Dan Pratt]

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?

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[elcarter]

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 .

 

[TimT]

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!

 

[elcarter]

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?

 

[TimT]

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

 

[TimT]

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

 

[Dan Pratt]

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?

 

[TimT]

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

 

[barls]

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

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[barls]

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

 

[menoetes]

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).

 

[TimT]

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.