Adding Honey to beer.

[TheWiggman]

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.

 

[leighaus]

Lol.

Trials and tribulations...

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

 

[TimT]

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.

 

[TheWiggman]

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.

 

[TimT]

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.