Honey Wheat Beer Help And How Do I/can I Use The Honey To Prime Bottle

[Belgrave Brewer]

We put ours on yesterday. ESB 3kg Bavarian Wheat kit base made up to 20 litres and Wyeast 3333.

SWMBO is demanding prominent honey flavours and aromas, and residual sweetness. Should I add some less-fermentable sugars (there is such a thing???) at the priming stage to keep some sweetness in it?

Hey BB how did yours taste during the first two months? What made it 'not really drinkable'?

Cheers

BlueJ

BlueJ,

The beer was simply green, too young to drink. You may get a different result, but if you are using a similar recipe, you will most likely need to let it sit for 2 months before you can confidently share one with someone else.

There is also some residual sweetness that I did not detect earlier on, so you should be fine with SWMBO's demands.

Let us know how you go!

BB

 

[BlueJ]

BB we bottled ours the other day. We used about 300g of honey for about 20l of beer.

We chose to blend two light coloured, aromatic honeys. It is too early to say how they will end up, but going into the bottle the honey flavour was...light and aromatic. :lol: And pretty well masked by the beer flavours.

I am hoping that the honey flavour won't be subtle. SWMBO's benchmark for this style is Kunstmann's honey wheat from Valdivia in Chile (that's right, a German family brewing beer in South America), and this beer is anything but subtle in its honey intensity and sweetness. It actually drinks well, if you don't mind the sweetness.

I guess they filter out the yeast after primary and force carbonate, being a commercial brew. I suppose this would leave all the honey sweetness in the beer. We can't replicate this, as we don't have a keg setup nor a counterflow filler.

So in the future if we raise the amount of honey we add, it will be a fine balance between honey intensity and bottle bombs I guess!

Did you end up drinking all yours? Got another on yet?

BlueJ

 

[Belgrave Brewer]

Hey BlueJ,

I had a Halloween party this past weekend and broke out the Honey Wheat. It is truly ready now and those who tried it enjoyed it. The honey flavour is still very prominent and has the residual spicy overtone of the Leatherwood honey. It has also remained sweet rather than becoming dry. I'm down to less than a case ogf the Honey Wheat and a 12 pack of Pale Ale, I'm going to be out of beer before my next one is ready I'm afraid.

I have to say that I will be working with this recipe again and trying the alterations I mentioned earlier in this post. It is a fantastic base but needs some refinement.

A Porter is on board for this weekend and am really looking forward to it.

I'm still a kit brewer and am looking forward to getting into the boil this summer. I've turned my neighbor on to home brewing and he's done two kits in two weeks as he's eager to have a few brews ready for Christmas.

I'm going to the Brewer for a Day event at Red Duck near Camperdown on Dec 2nd. Should be a great experience working on a Pale Ale and going through the entire process up to fermentaion. I'm hoping to learn a lot and give me a little more confidence to get onto boiling up my own wort.

Let me know how your turns out.

Cheers,

BB