Honey

[rockeye84]

Hi All,

For something a bit different I put down a honey wheat lager last weekend, 60% pale malt 20% local honey, 20% wheat. mashed @ 69c so it don't end up too dry.

Dumped the honey in @ 0min to kill any nasties, and hopefully keep some honey flavor.

Fermenting with danish lager, has been fermenting ferociously, is currently sitting @ 1.017 hoping for an SG or 1.008. bittered to about 15ibu.

Anyway to the point..

Had a sip from the hydo sample and it seem quite sour, not really cidery tasting, just a bit sour, never really experienced sour from my prior brews .

Normal when brewing with honey? Will it mellow with time?

Rocki

 

[TimT]

Twenty per cent is fairly high if you're using it as an adjunct; time will probably help.

 

[Killer Brew]

Only ever done it in a cider using boxwood honey. The sweetness fermented right out leaving only a very ordinary taste.

 

[TimT]

Today/soon I'll be bottling a braggot, which I treated very much like a wine - it's 1/3 rye, 1/3 malt, 1/3 honey; and I gave it a wine yeast.

It certainly does have sour notes. I'm going to age it out for at least a year.

Honey fermenting on its own will end up with a powerful wine taste, probably with some methyl alcohols and phenols and fusels that you'll want to age for a while to break down. Many honey beers won't have any of this - the malt character will be too overwhelming and the honey will ferment almost all out. You'll end up with a dry beer. But push the honey amounts up and you might certainly expect to get some more of those fermented honey characteristics in your beer.

So, the solution is probably age.

 

[rockeye84]

OK it pretty clear that the honey is the issue in this brew.

The flavor is generally good just the sour overtones i don't like, i am going to age it to see if it clears. Is the sourness due to acid or the other alcohols you mention above?

If it doesn't would it be wise to add something alkaline to counteract the sourness. Any ideas, bi-carb maybe?

 

[TimT]

Well you've got 20 per cent honey in there. Honey has a lot of sugars in it - dextose, fructose, sucrose, and a whole heap of plant stuff - but relatively little maltose.

It's not going to ferment the same way or taste the same way as the malt. And generally speaking an ageing process will help with honey.

I shudder at the thought of adding bicarb to a finished brew. Generally hops are used to mask flavours people don't like, don't suppose that's possible?

 

[rockeye84]

Cheers 4 ya help mate, I'll lager it for 6+ weeks. Hopefully it mellows.

 

[stomachshoulders]

I experienced the same with a saison I recently bottled. I used a 400g jar of honey at flameout for a ~5kg grain bill. It definitely has some sourness to it which isn't totally at odds with the straw notes from the yeast. Still a bit more twang than I was hoping for. will see how it pulls up in a few weeks

 

[Colo]

I picked up 330ml of Blue Gum Honey while in the Barossa a few weeks back, Ive had a sachet of WB-06 sitting in the fridge for a while now so decided to make a Honey Wheat beer.

Took FG today and she is all done, so thought I would have a whee taste...I cant quite put my finger on it but it has a really weird tang to it, I had to keep tasting it over and over but still couldnt warm to it and I'm wondering if its a byproduct of the yeast from the honey. Will bottle and let it sit for 2-3 weeks and see if that makes a difference.

Mrs said she thought it tasted fine, but that really doesnt mean anything ha ha! Might be hers to drink if it doesnt settle down a little. :unsure:

 

[rockeye84]

Yeh my honey beer ended up not too bad, sourness defiantly died down with some lagering but still noticeable. Was still quite drinkable. Dunno if I'll be rushing to make another tho, unless I can find some insight as to how to dial down the sour notes, but keep the honey flavour.

The sourness must come from the non-sugar/non-fermentable honey byproducts, I've done the exact same beer but had 20% dextrose as opposed to honey, no sour notes whatsoever.

Guessing it's a matter of finding the correct strain of honey, I used local coastal honey in mine, heard honey from around fruit trees is best.

 

[klangers]

Honey's a pain the arse.

In small amounts a great addition to porters or stouts, but the honey aroma will rapidly denature and disappear and all you're left with is a slightly twangy taste in its absence.

I reckon the best way to use honey is a small amount of strongly-flavoured honey, and the beer served fresh (little to no aging). The small amount of honey limits the weird effects from fermentation of the non-malt sugars, and if enjoyed fresh the honey aroma actually lasts.

 

[Colo]

Dont think i'll be bothering with it again. The kicker is I cant even taste a hint of honey in the brew... what the hell was the point :huh:

 

[Grott]

Will mellow at about 6 weeks, the honey sugars have been eaten up which leaves the flavour of the honey itself, eg blue gum, mallee, or what ever you used (this needs to mellow). You should find it as a pleasant "after taste".
Cheers

 

[TimT]

Well when you chuck honey in the brew you end up with fermented honey: it's always going to taste and smell different.

Speaking as an occasional mead brewer, honey does *very* surprising and wondrous things if you give it time; in a good reasonably high strength mead, within about 6 months to a year it will develop a beautiful aroma - hard to describe, varies a bit from mead to mead, but with hints of toffee and caramel and beeswax and an oaky earthy character. But it needs time! The headache alcohols - the methyls and phenols and such like -have to break down; that'll take a month or two or three or maybe more. The taste of the brew will sharpen and refine into something more winelike. But I just loooooooove that smell of aged mead - and I think it would marry beautifully with a beer intended for ageing. It's very similar to a barleywine smell.

 

[Coodgee]

Not a great deal of discussion on honey on this site so resurrecting this old thread. I have a few kilos of a very high quality blue gum honey. I thought I might give it a go in a very simple honey wheat with 45/45/10 pils/wheat/honey and a single 60 minute addition of magnum @ 60 for 20 IBU. Have read a few articles that suggest adding the honey as late as possible preserves the subtle aromas. So I plan to add the honey at high Krausen.

Will drink fresh.

 

[Sidney Harbour-Bridge]

Not a great deal of discussion on honey on this site so resurrecting this old thread. I have a few kilos of a very high quality blue gum honey. I thought I might give it a go in a very simple honey wheat with 45/45/10 pils/wheat/honey and a single 60 minute addition of magnum @ 60 for 20 IBU. Have read a few articles that suggest adding the honey as late as possible preserves the subtle aromas. So I plan to add the honey at high Krausen.

Will drink fresh.

Will you boil the honey first?

 

[Coodgee]

Will you boil the honey first?

this post claims there is no need

 

[captain crumpet]

Ive always added honey at high krausen. Everything else still needs to be light enough for the honey flavour to come through. Works great in cream ales. I use it as around 15-20% of total fermentables.

 

[captain crumpet]

With no boiling of the honey.

 

[Yuz]

I've been kegging my batches, and leftovers bottling in 1.25l sodawater bottles with Honey (not the Capilano type) as primer.
Esp with dark brews - it's unreal once it matures. Honeymoon brew lol