Help With Honey Recipe

[rclemmett]

Hi all,

I'm looking for a little help with making a honey beer. I have never used honey in large quantities before.

I have a bit over 1kg of mystery honey............. I was thinking of mashing 2kg wheat and 1kg pale (prolly 68-70*C for an hour). 90min boil and chucking the honey in in the last 10 minutes. Hop wise???????????? I generally like fairly bitter beers, but that might not work with honey........

Any suggestions?

Has anyone used that much honey in a pale beer before, and how did it turn out?

Also, yeast, it's cold at the moment so I was thinking s-23, but that might be a bad idea with honey and wheat.

 

[tdh]

Good idea to mash extra hot.

That's a lot of honey but not excessive.

Add it as you're chilling to try and capture some flavour and aroma.

Probably bitter less rather than more. 20-25IBU should be adequate.

Give it leads of hop flavour if your keen (1g/litre at 10 mins), Tettnanger springs to mind.

tdh

 

[peas_and_corn]

that's pretty similar to a honey recipe I did a while back- I did 2kg wheat and 2kg pale- your recipe IMO has a too high percentage of wheat. I didn't hop it very much either, bittered to about 25IBUs with a small amount of flavour hops- made a nice, mild honey beer with a standout honey flavour. I used BiLo brand honey, added at about 5 minutes (though nowadays I would add it as I begin chilling)

 

[Airgead]

What you're making there is a Braggot. I make them all the time and the 3kg grain - 1kg honey sounds pretty good. I usually hit mine with English hops (Fuggles and EKG) but I have done a couple with hallertau and tetnang that came out pretty well. 20-30IBU is the range to shoot for. Depending on the type, they honey will probably ferment out fully dry and leave very little residual so I'd aim on the lower end for a first batch in case it ends up unbalanced. Keep the flavour and aroma hops lighter than you usually would to avoid swamping what remains of the honey character as it can be quite delicate.

Depending on the type of honey you may also find that it take ages to ferment right out and can take a while to age before its really good. Honey ferments tend to take off like a rocket then die down and just dribble along for ages so make sure that its absolutely finished before you bottle (if you bottle) otherwise you can end up with bombs.

Cheers
Dave

 

[tdh]

Looks like it's all sorted for you -

mash hot
ferment cool (keep esters at bay)
20-30 IBU
add honey at chill
not too heavy on the late hopping with something delicate non-American
add yeast nutrient to assist ferment

 

[rclemmett]

That was fast! I thought I'd be waiting for days for a reply.

Thanks all for the advice.

If I add the honey at chill will I run the risk of infecting it, or is that just an old wives tale about honey?

 

[Adamt]

If you throw it in at flameout, it should be hot enough to pasteurise it.

 

[Airgead]

If you throw it in at flameout, it should be hot enough to pasteurise it.

Yep.. you want to pasturise rather than boil. if you boil you will drive off all the arromatics. Be aware though that the whole boil/no boil thing has reached the status of a holy war among honey brewers.

Cheers
Dave

 

[Adamt]

The way I see it, supermarket blended honeys are almost characterless, i.e. contain less volatiles than single-origin or good quality honeys, so these honeys can be boiled without any noticeable difference... but there's no reason to boil it in the first place.

I'd love to hear the reasons why you should boil (good quality) honey and how it doesn't reduce the honey characteristics in the final product...

 

[Shortz]

I made a simple k&k honey beer once. I really liked it, though it took about 6months for the honey flavour to come through. maybe it will take less time because you're using double the honey i used.

IMO, bottle it, put in your cellar or a cool dry place and forget about it for a while, come back in 6months, eeeeaaauuuuttiiiiful [insert Con the fruiter impression].

While we're talking about honey, does it matter the type of honey you use?? I was told that clover honey is the best and that eucalyptus wasn't such a good idea?! anyone know why this would be?

 

[Airgead]

While we're talking about honey, does it matter the type of honey you use?? I was told that clover honey is the best and that eucalyptus wasn't such a good idea?! anyone know why this would be?

Because they don't know what they are talking about.

Clover honey is very light and doesn't have a lot of flavour. Eucalypt honeys are fantastic but they do need a little aging time. I have used white box, yellow box, ironbark, redgum, spotted gum and a couple of others. All fantastic. They are fairly strong and have lots of flavour and aroma to contribute. With clover you might as well use the supermarket stuff. All its doing is adding fermentables.

Eucalypt honeys got a bad name back in the early days when some fairly elderly batches made it over via slow boat to meadmakers in the UK. It was poor transport and storage rather than poor honey.

Use some good eucalypt stuff. You won't regret it. Save the cheap stuff for your toast. Actually the eucalypt is better on your toast as well.

Cheers
Dave

 

[rclemmett]

I'd like to all who helped with the recipe on this because it turned out a-ok. :icon_cheers:

The recipe I settled on was 1kg pale grain, 1.5kg wheat grain, 1.25kg Honey (don't know what type), 250g light dry malt. Mash for 1hr at 70C.

90 min boil LDM added
12g super alpha 1hr
10g cascade 30min
5g cascade, 5g tettnanger 20min
5g cascade, 5g tettnanger 10min
heat off 10g tettnanger and honey added, rest for 10min then cool to 20C. Added s-23 and placed in fridge at 11C for 10days.
OG 1044
FG 1006 bulk prime 150g dextrose.

I have had a couple tonight and :beer: cheers.

 

[stillscottish]

I'm drinking one at the moment - ok, not right now as I'm still at work. :angry:
From memory it was 3.5k pale, 1k wheat, easy on the hops and 1k honey.

There's a faint honey note and I'm going to brew another one next week but with honey from one of those roadside places that'll hopefully have more flavour than supermarket stuff.
I'm going to try 1.5k, maybe 2 and add to secondary.
edit.........and bulk prime with honey.

There's nothing like wrapping your lips round a Honey Blonde.

Campbell