Adding Honey to beer.

[barls]

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

 

[Dan Pratt]

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.

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[TheWiggman]

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

 

[nvs-brews]

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!

 

[marksy]

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.

 

[brewermp]

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.

 

[TheWiggman]

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.

 

[TheWiggman]

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.

 

[TimT]

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!

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[brewermp]

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.

 

[TheWiggman]

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.

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[TimT]

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')?

 

[TheWiggman]

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.

 

[slcmorro]

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.

 

[TheWiggman]

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?

 

[slcmorro]

Chill or no chill?

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

 

[TimT]

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.