Matilda Bay Beez Neez Clone?

[chemacky]

Hi all, first post here after a few days of solid topic reading.

Firstly, I'm very new to brewing, but also very keen! I just started my thrid brew, however I haven't tried my first or second yet! My first brew (a Brewiser wheat beer kit) should technically be ready according to the can instructions, however I can't taste it yet due to a terrible cold! Everything tastes like cardboard to me at the moment. It's interesting why I'm such a keen brewer when I don't really like beer all that much. I tend to like exotic beers however... and i suppose this is the reason for this thread.

For that first brew I added some honey when bottling to some of the bottles just to see if it would taste anything like Beez Neez. After doing some solid reading on this forum, it appears that this is an unorthadox approach to say the least. But being new to brewing I didn't even know if adding honey was 'legal' or what, so i didn't want to ruin the whole batch by adding it to the fermenter. Has anyone else ever added something like this when bottling? Is it a definite no no, or are there not really any rules?


Secondly, I was wondering if anyone had made a beer similar to Matilda Bay's Beez Neez? Or can think of some ingredients for me to try? Please remember that I'm along way from advaced when it comes to this, so a can of wort and some other things added as abouut as complicated as I can go atm. I'm terribly fond of Beez Neez, but not at all fond of the $21 for a 6 pack price.


Thirdly, Does anyone have any exoitc-like beer recipes? I read in this topic http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/forum/inde...c=8885&st=0 of a licorice stout, which I am certainly going to try. Thats the sort of thing that really intrigues me atm.

Thanks in advance!

 

[0M39A]

adding honey to the bottles can be dangerous unless you know exactly how much you are putting in and how much it will carbonate the beer, otherwise the yeast will go to town on the honey and the priming sugar, and before you know it you will have bottle grenades.

 

[boingk]

Hey there chemacky, good to see the enthusiasm! I'm on my 9th and 10th brews [recently got another fermenter], and I think I can answer your problem, at least in part.

If you want a good honey flavour in the brew, you may want to consider replacing some of the normal brewing sugars and malts with honey [preferably knock out the dextrose in favour maltodextrin or malt]. This will give a smooth and slightly lighter body to the beer, with mild honey taste. Orange blossom honey is supposed to be the best for this method.

However, to up the honey taste, priming the bottles with honey will help a lot. To do this, don't put the usual 6g/750ml of sugar in, and instead use the honeys packaging to find out the percentage of sugar it contains and then scale the amount of honey up to equal 6g sugar for every 750ml bottle.

Example: Instead of priming with 6g sugar per 750ml, I use honey 'X'.

Sugar per 100g = 82g, so this honey is 82% sugar. 6 divided by 0.82 = ~7.3

So I will prime my 750ml bottles with around 7 to 7 and a half grams of honey each, may be useful to use a syringe on this one [ask at local chemist/pharmacy, don't need the needle on it, 10ml would be best]...and weigh it on some digital scales to determine what measurement corresponds with a particular weighting. Thereafter just suck up the required volume and squirt into the bottles, fill, cap and shake!

EDIT: A way around the digital scale method of finding out what volume equals what weight of honey is to use up [or empty into a few glasses] a container of honey [I like those 500g Capillano squirt ones], then wash it out, refill with water, and find out how many millilitres of water it holds. Eg: 500g honey in 250ml container = 2g honey per millilitre, so 7g honey will equal 3.5ml! Hope this isn't all too daunting.

EDIT #2: Microwaving the honey may make it easier to 'syringe' into the bottles.

 

[rahne]

i my self have tried a beez neez clone though with no success how ever with research after woods and help fom people from another forum we came up with this

(quote)spoke to the brewer who makes beez neez at beertopia and although he didn't give me the full gain bill, its:

1/3 light malt
1/3 wheat malt
1/3 capalano honey
and pride of ringwood hops

it was originally made as a gift for the honey producers for capalano and the brewer sold the excess in the bar and as it was so successful he decided to put it in production
(/quote)

so this is the recipe
1 tin Thomas Coopers Brewmaster Selection Wheat Beer or Black Rock Whispering Wheat
1 kg LDME
500g Capilano honey

no extra hops required as beez neez is a smooth beer and hops in kit will do

forum page http://www.homebrewandbeer.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4699
we come up with this recipe later down the page

 

[wildschwein]

Greetings,

This link could provide some basic information too. See Matilda Bay: Beez Neez Brewing Notes

 

[0M39A]

Hey there chemacky, good to see the enthusiasm! I'm on my 9th and 10th brews [recently got another fermenter], and I think I can answer your problem, at least in part.

If you want a good honey flavour in the brew, you may want to consider replacing some of the normal brewing sugars and malts with honey [preferably knock out the dextrose in favour maltodextrin or malt]. This will give a smooth and slightly lighter body to the beer, with mild honey taste. Orange blossom honey is supposed to be the best for this method.

However, to up the honey taste, priming the bottles with honey will help a lot. To do this, don't put the usual 6g/750ml of sugar in, and instead use the honeys packaging to find out the percentage of sugar it contains and then scale the amount of honey up to equal 6g sugar for every 750ml bottle.

Example: Instead of priming with 6g sugar per 750ml, I use honey 'X'.

Sugar per 100g = 82g, so this honey is 82% sugar. 6 divided by 0.82 = ~7.3

So I will prime my 750ml bottles with around 7 to 7 and a half grams of honey each, may be useful to use a syringe on this one [ask at local chemist/pharmacy, don't need the needle on it, 10ml would be best]...and weigh it on some digital scales to determine what measurement corresponds with a particular weighting. Thereafter just suck up the required volume and squirt into the bottles, fill, cap and shake!

EDIT: A way around the digital scale method of finding out what volume equals what weight of honey is to use up [or empty into a few glasses] a container of honey [I like those 500g Capillano squirt ones], then wash it out, refill with water, and find out how many millilitres of water it holds. Eg: 500g honey in 250ml container = 2g honey per millilitre, so 7g honey will equal 3.5ml! Hope this isn't all too daunting.

EDIT #2: Microwaving the honey may make it easier to 'syringe' into the bottles.

or, you could do it the far far simpler way, and just bulk prime with honey...

 

[Rustyc30]

When I did my first few brew I did the same thing adding honey when bottling did half the batch with and half without. I didn't get the real honey tinge that i was after but when you did a side by side tasting you could notice some difference. Only problem that i had was the the carbonation differed for each bottle but i didn't really use a scientific method of measuring