Honey In Brew Recipes

[vchead]

Hi Brewers,

I was at RedRock beer cafe last week and had a few pints of their own brewed Honey Ale. Oh Baby! I can still taste that lovely sweetness.

I have seen posts on brewing with honey before but can't find them (i am a lazy and inefficient searcher).

I recall the threads suggesting sterilising the honey in the microwave before adding but can't recall amounts/types and when to add info.

Can you assist?

I was thinking of adding to a lager/american ale type recipe something like this:

Can of goo (lager/pils/american)
BE2
150g LDM
150g Dex
150g carapils grain steeped and boiled
some hallateau or similar hops
US 05 yeast
honey???


Cheers,

Rodders

 

[samhighley]

I believe that a critical point is making sure you don't use eucalyptus honey, otherwise your beer is likely to end up tasting like vicks vaporub.

I think a clover honey is the best type, but they're hard to find in these drought conditions.

I tried to find strawberry clover honey for a recipe suggested by Coopers, but I never had any luck finding it.

Sam

 

[amiddler]

Rodders

I have added up to 750g of supermarket off the shelf honey to some of my brews. 750g in 23L of brew packs a small punch. Put it this way it is more than subtle. I don't know how much of a honey hit the Honey Ale has but I expect with a name like "Honey Ale" it would have been quite allot. Maybe try starting with 1Kg for a robust honey profile. As for what type I hear Tasmanian Leatherwood honey is great for brewing with a flavour that isn't knocked down to much by the fermenting process. I have never been able to get my hands on any to try this myself but you might be able to locate some yourself.

I tried bulk priming a brew some months ago with 250g of honey in 23L and there just wasn't enough honey flavour left from such a small amount. Definitely honey in primary for me from now on.

Cheers

 

[mika]

I believe that a critical point is making sure you don't use eucalyptus honey, otherwise your beer is likely to end up tasting like vicks vaporub.

Bull

I've used Eucalyptus based Honey and hasn't been an issue

 

[bradmcm]

I have to agree. If you like the taste of eucalypt honey, you will like it in your beer.

 

[Airgead]

I believe that a critical point is making sure you don't use eucalyptus honey, otherwise your beer is likely to end up tasting like vicks vaporub.
Sam

Absolutely untrue. I make all my meads and honey beers from Eucalypt honeys and they are fine. In fact, given that the Eucalypt is the dominant plant species over much of Australia its very hard to find any honey that isn't at least partly eucalypt.

I have successfully used -

• Red Gum
• Spotted Gum
• Ironbark
• White Box
• Yellow Box
• Mallee
• And a couple of others that I can't remember

All good.

Cheers
Dave

 

[rich_lamb]

Here's some things I've learned from using honey in beer:

1) The honey almost fully ferments, so you don't get "sweetness" unless your recipe is unbalanced. What you get is a flavour and aroma profile left from the honey after the sugar is gone. Which can be a little hard to comprehend, initially.

2) Based on (1), the best honeys to use are the ones with really distinctive flavours. My fave is Tassie Leatherwood, which leaves a really distinct lavender-type aroma and unusual flavour in the beer. Great in a wheat beer IMO.

3) You should boil the honey to pasteurise it (I don't care what people say about honey's natural antiseptic qualities), but - and this is critical - you should not add to the boil for more than 5-10 minutes. The honey character you want in your beer is quite delicate and is largely destroyed by an extensive boil.
ie. you add honey to your boil for 60 minutes and you might as well just add table sugar.

4) In a typical 20L batch, about 750g of honey is plenty. More than this and you start to lose some of the "beer" backbone and start turning into a mead.

5) Honey producers are a disorganised bunch who have no clues when it comes to tasting notes or how to accurately/consistently describe the flavour of different honeys. You need to talk to a lot of people and cross-reference the flavour profiles before you can have much idea which honey is best for which beer - and it will taste different depending on where you buy it. Go for farmers markets; the supermarket stuff is all blended and tastes the same.

 

[mika]

Kinda OT, has anyone tried Honey Malt and is it anything like Honey ? I've seen it referenced in some American recipes.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

It has long been a myth among mead-makers that eucalyptus honeys are bad. I believe that it is due to a bad batch of some hitting the US docks a *long* time ago.

I use a fair bit of honey in my meads, including eucalyptus honeys and it is all good.

When I visited a honey factory on Kangaroo Island earlier this year, the guide told me that bees have a maximum flight radius of a very small number of kilometres (2 or 3 from my crappy memory). I think it would be an exceptional 3kilometre radius circle of Australia that didn't have some eucalypt in it, so I'm *guessing* that there would be a little bit of all sorts of things in most Australian honey.

I've always used 'brand name' honey in my mead on the basis that I *believe* them to be pasteurised (and free of dead bee bits) so I don't have to boil them and blow off any honey-like goodness.

Goforit - it can only bee good.

 

[Airgead]

3) You should boil the honey to pasteurise it (I don't care what people say about honey's natural antiseptic qualities), but - and this is critical - you should not add to the boil for more than 5-10 minutes. The honey character you want in your beer is quite delicate and is largely destroyed by an extensive boil.
ie. you add honey to your boil for 60 minutes and you might as well just add table sugar.

I'm going to come out as a no boler here... Even a 5-10 minute boil will drive off a lot of the flavours. Not so bad in a honey beer but in a mead thats bad. I gently pasturise for 5 mins at 60-70C for a mead. For a beer I'll add it at flameout and crank up the chiller straight away.

Cheers
Dave

 

[barls]

im also a no boiler i prefer to use metabisulfate for my meads and beers with fruit and honey. i dose then leave for 24 hours to dissipate then pitch. if you can find it the strawberry clover honey is brilliant in a beer, i looked for about 3 years till i found it last time and now i still have 4 kg of it in the cupboard as its far and few between being available. as previously said the gum varieties are fine they just can take some time to age out . i do have a few recipes that ive made most are on here, try searching with barls and honey

 

[bradmcm]

It has long been a myth among mead-makers that eucalyptus honeys are bad. I believe that it is due to a bad batch of some hitting the US docks a *long* time ago.

Actually it was British mead makers being protectionist in the 1960s. Cheap honey flooded into the UK from Australia and so the honey industry over there put about the story that eucalypt honeys were dreadful and would ruin your meads.

 

[Adamt]

This is a chop of a post I made in another thread regarding getting a honey taste in finished beer... link.

"On the honey flavour front... the sugar profile of honeys is majorly fructose, glucose and maltose, which will ferment out completely. Different types of honey will have different profiles of non-basic sugars. Finding a honey with a higher proportion of non-basic sugars is the key to getting honey flavour in your final product, although over time (unless you pasteurise your beer/absolutely filter out yeast) the sugars will ferment and you will lose your flavour."

Most single-origin honeys (yellow gum, blue gum, yellow box, ones with names) have more non-basic sugars (and hence taste better ) than the crappy blended honeys you get in the supermarket. If you are going for single-origin honeys I would definitely pasteurise them (not boil them).

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

IMHO honey is for toast not to be used in beer.Have not had one yet that I like , It reminds me of 2-3 Pentanedione a VDK a close cousin to diacetyl.If you find a good one please let me know, I like mead though.Funny isnt it.
GB

 

[0M39A]

IMHO honey is for toast not to be used in beer.Have not had one yet that I like , It reminds me of 2-3 Pentanedione a VDK a close cousin to diacetyl.If you find a good one please let me know, I like mead though.Funny isnt it.
GB

Agree.

Even the much raved about boags honey porter i didnt enjoy one bit.

honey taste was just out of place imo. made the beer taste tacky.