Honey To Prime When Bottling

[floydmeddler]

Howdy all,

Getting everything ready for my next batch: A dark lager. I've come across a few instances on the web where people have used honey to prime their bottles. For a 23litre batch, I was planning to add around 215g of honey to my bulk priming bucket.

What are your experiences / opinions on this? Will it add new flavour? Will it take longer to carbonate? etc.

If it's a bad idea, please LET ME KNOW and I'll use 330g of DME instead.

Many thanks in advance,

Floyd.

 

[Effect]

I don't think there is enough of the sugars that the yeast will eat from the honey to produce enough CO2...

could be wrong though

Honey also contains a lot of impurities and things that we don't want in there - such as wild yeasts and bacteria among other things

 

[Bribie G]

According to the good ol Wikipedia the composition of a typical honey is:

Typical honey analysis^[17]

• Fructose: 38.0%
• Glucose: 31.0%
• Sucrose: 1.0%
• Water: 17.0%

If you prime your bottles with cane sugar (sucrose - a disaccharide) the yeast 'splits' the sucrose into two monosaccharides to yield Fructose and Glucose that the yeast can ferment directly. So looking at the above list of components, honey is an 'already cracked' substance. However over the length of time that the beer conditions in the bottle there's probably not a lot of difference.

215 g of honey according to my trusty Windows calculator contains 36.55 g water, thus leaving 178.45 of fermentables. For my 24 L brews I go for 150 - 180 g of cane sugar which gives very consistent results ( yes I use sugar ) for a lager style beer, so your quantity should be spot on. Edit: on further consideration, for less than 24L you might like to cut back to maybe 200 g.

However as previous poster mentioned, whilst honey is a very stable substance because of its high sugars content, that doesn't mean it is guaranteed sterile, so probably a ten minute boil prior to priming.

I often use honey when reviving yeast for a starter bottle as it's a handy dollop, but boil first.

 

[quachy]

For each batch of beer I bottle, I usually do about 1/4 with honey instead of carb drops. I put in about 1/4 of a teaspoon. Honey has about 20% less sugar than cane (correct me if I'm wrong anyone), so I go with a heaped 1/4 teaspoon. No explosions so far and yes there is a nice honey flavour and smell to the beer. Doing it this way if there are any nastiesin the honey, I don;t ruin all of my beer and it also gives me a bit of variation from the 23lt of straight beer, whatever style.

Quachy

 

[buttersd70]

Bribie is bang on with what he's saying. (except for using cane sugar. Bad, bribie. bad boy. )

 

[katzke]

Howdy all,

Getting everything ready for my next batch: A dark lager. I've come across a few instances on the web where people have used honey to prime their bottles. For a 23litre batch, I was planning to add around 215g of honey to my bulk priming bucket.

What are your experiences / opinions on this? Will it add new flavour? Will it take longer to carbonate? etc.

If it's a bad idea, please LET ME KNOW and I'll use 330g of DME instead.

Many thanks in advance,

Floyd.

A bit off topic but I like you guys. The American group I look at would say all sorts of bad things about even the idea of priming with anything but corn sugar. Then they would try and convert you to kegging.

 

[Swinging Beef]

A bit off topic but I like you guys. The American group I look at would say all sorts of bad things about even the idea of priming with anything but corn sugar. Then they would try and convert you to kegging.

yes, because the Belgians had it wrong

 

[RobboMC]

Forgive me is this is a silly question, but if you want the honey flavour why not just put the 330g or whatever amount of honey into the fermenter with the brew?

And then prime as usual of course.

My understanding is that word 'typical' is an issue. Honey can vary in composition; and the only sure way to determine
just how fermentable a certain batch or style might be is to test it, with hydrometer readings before and after when test fermenting a small measured amount.

All in all, I feel it's easier to use something with a constant fermentability, like dex or DME.

PS 330g seems a lt of DME for a 23 litre batch?

 

[peas_and_corn]

I agree with Robbo. The sugar use use to prime with has little to no impact on the flavour. I have primed with sugar, DME, and brown sugar and have found no discernable difference from batch to batch (yes I know it's not a scientific way of doing it, but I bulk prime and I'm lazy). Since I am lazy, honey has struck me as being just too much of a PITA to deal with- so much easier to measure out a powder of some sort. If you are seeking out a honey touch, add it to the fermenter, but if you're just thinking of using it as a different priming agent, it's not worth the hassle.

 

[Stuffa]

I've made a couple of lagers with 1kg of orange blossom honey, 800gm in the fermenter and 200gm to prime. Not a bad beer at all!

 

[barls]

Forgive me is this is a silly question, but if you want the honey flavour why not just put the 330g or whatever amount of honey into the fermenter with the brew?

And then prime as usual of course.

My understanding is that word 'typical' is an issue. Honey can vary in composition; and the only sure way to determine
just how fermentable a certain batch or style might be is to test it, with hydrometer readings before and after when test fermenting a small measured amount.

All in all, I feel it's easier to use something with a constant fermentability, like dex or DME.

PS 330g seems a lt of DME for a 23 litre batch?

ok for starters honey in a beer ferments out almost totally with only a slight flavor left due to being scrubbed by the co2 during fermentation. the honey in the bottle is easy to do with just a squeeze bottle and about 8g/L
it really does make a difference in the arroma

 

[quachy]

it really does make a difference in the arroma

Certainly does. Cracked open a pale ale bottle primed with honey tonight. Had a beautifully sweet honey aroma from start to finish. Taste wise, only a hint of honey flavour and not sweet as the aroma would suggest.

Quachy

 

[peas_and_corn]

Hmm, it does make a big difference? My next batch to be made will be a honey beer, and I'm planning on bottling it- perhaps I should give the ol' honey a go in priming and see what it delivers...

 

[buttersd70]

Hmm, it does make a big difference? My next batch to be made will be a honey beer, and I'm planning on bottling it- perhaps I should give the ol' honey a go in priming and see what it delivers...

I think your beers might have too much other junk, like malt and hops, getting in the way of the honey goodness.

 

[peas_and_corn]

Damn malt!! Actually, mead is on my 'to do' list, maybe sometime this summer I'll make some...

 

[floydmeddler]

Forgive me is this is a silly question, but if you want the honey flavour why not just put the 330g or whatever amount of honey into the fermenter with the brew?

And then prime as usual of course.

My understanding is that word 'typical' is an issue. Honey can vary in composition; and the only sure way to determine
just how fermentable a certain batch or style might be is to test it, with hydrometer readings before and after when test fermenting a small measured amount.

All in all, I feel it's easier to use something with a constant fermentability, like dex or DME.

PS 330g seems a lt of DME for a 23 litre batch?

Hi, I got the measurements from

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator...ml?10063499#tag

How much DME would you use for a 23 litre batch?

Cheers!

Floyd

 

[floydmeddler]

I've made a couple of lagers with 1kg of orange blossom honey, 800gm in the fermenter and 200gm to prime. Not a bad beer at all!

Hmm... I like the sound of that!

 

[floydmeddler]

Folks, thank you for all your replies... I'm still in two minds though. Well... have two weeks to think about it!

Thanks again,

Floyd.