Aussie honeys in Aussie and American beer recipes

[yankinoz]

Australia offers a greater variety of honeys than anywhere I've been. Throw 500-1000g into a 20L batch of beer, and the flavour of the beer should vary greatly with the honey. I don't brew many, but others here may have experimented with different sorts.

A caution if anyone uses a honey beer recipe from a US or Canadian forum: unless otherwise stated, the honey is probably mostly from clover and decidedly on the mild side, even bland. If the recipe callsfor a large amount of honey and you're using flavourful Aussie honey, you might try a smaller addition. Orange blossom honey from Florida is also very mild, but perfumy. On the other hand, if a US recipe calls for buckwheat honey, that has a very strong flavor, more than, say, stringybark honey. The one commercial buckwheat honey beer I ever tried tasted highly medicinal. (Not to be confused with beer from malted buckwhweat, which can be very good)

 

[Vini2ton]

I brewed a few with leatherwood years ago. Interesting, but not really to my taste. I found that using 500gms of a cheapish non-descript honey, in a 23 ltr brew, worked well in that it seemed to dry the beer out somewhat. But I feel that it left no discernable flavour of the honey. The same amount of inverted sugar probably do the same thing and alot less in cost.

 

[MHB]

Yellow Box rules!
Mark

 

[donald_trub]

Years ago I made a honey wheat and didn't pay much attention to the honey I threw it. I used eucalyptus honey and the beer was a total menthol bomb and got dumped.

A few years later I used orange blossom in an IPA with very pleasant results.

 

[Outback]

Yellow Box rules!
Mark

Hallelujah!!

 

[MHB]

Hallelujah!!

You have a great local paper out Betoota way.
Mark

 

[Vini2ton]

Years ago I made a honey wheat and didn't pay much attention to the honey I threw it. I used eucalyptus honey and the beer was a total menthol bomb and got dumped.

A few years later I used orange blossom in an IPA with very pleasant results.

Are you in the states? I believe that eucalyptus is added to the honey there for therapeutic purposes. I have never, of all the range of honeys derived from eucalytus forests we have in Australia, tasted any that tasted offensively of eucalyptus.

 

[donald_trub]

I'm in Australia. This was quite a while back so I couldn't tell you which brand, but it came from either Coles or Woolies. Offensive is an understatement - it was full on.

 

[Hangover68]

I brewed a few with leatherwood years ago. Interesting, but not really to my taste. I found that using 500gms of a cheapish non-descript honey, in a 23 ltr brew, worked well in that it seemed to dry the beer out somewhat. But I feel that it left no discernable flavour of the honey. The same amount of inverted sugar probably do the same thing and alot less in cost.

I love leatherwood honey but not sure i would like it in a beer, very unique but strong flavour.

 

[Vini2ton]

I've looked back in my brew diaries and mostly used honey when I extract brewed. I had a little local honey shop run by an apiarist. He had all sorts of different honeys. One he called cactus honey which was in fact aloe. Very dark, I used this in a porter that was fairly out there. I was into making mead back then. Blackberry, yellow box, grapefruit, red clover and redgum. The honey shop shut, after that I used supermarket varieties. I can see I used it to dry out the extract brews. Ah sweet memories.

 

[Hwa]

The best honey of all is......... mangrove!