What Honey Should I Use

[ben_sa]

Hey guys. I'm putting down a wheat tonight. Extract kit from TCB. the recipe calls for 500g Of honey.

Just wondering what honey you guys use exactly?

Cheers
ben

 

[brettprevans]

the stuff from bees! kidding

any honey will do. its personal preferance as to what you use. you could use a big honey like leatherwood or banksia or plain old table honey for a softer flavour.

all down to personal peferance.

 

[Andrew Coleman]

Macadamia - bush honey, and especially gilberts orange blossom honey are two great light flavoured and coloured honeys with very pleasant citrus-like aromatics!

Drewy

 

[lonte]

I was advised to avoid eucalypt honeys - although having said that I never tried it to see why. I used Macadamia for the only one I ever tried.

 

[ben_sa]

Does 500g in 20l sound like a bit much? It's an attempt at a hoeegarden obviously with peel and corriander. But 500g of honey sounds a bit much to me???

 

[Pete2501]

Does 500g in 20l sound like a bit much? It's an attempt at a hoeegarden obviously with peel and corriander. But 500g of honey sounds a bit much to me???

I used 1kg of pure(straight from the honeycomb) honey in my last batch of Honey and Chilli Ginger Beer and it doesn't taste sweet at all. It's actually quite high sitting around 1.018 - 1.020.

Then after looking for the ferementability of honey I found this.

honey based alcohol also tends to give nasty hangovers...

Link

Edit: Found some honey breakdown.

Typical honey analysis.[26]
Fructose: 38.2%
Glucose: 31.3%
Sucrose: 1.3%
Maltose: 7.1%
Water: 17.2%
Higher sugars: 1.5%
Ash: 0.2%
Other/undetermined: 3.2%

Link

So of that typical honey break down 72% is fermentable and the rest is a mix of water and disaccharides. I can't wait to try the finished product. I didn't think yeast could convert disaccharides but they can eat sucrose so I figure disaccharides are good to go. That's 81.3% fermentables good to go.

 

[ben_sa]

Cheers Pete, Seems 500g wont be too overpowering then

 

[rday]

From what I understand, honey contains wax esters than fermentation can turn into turpenes, which is what leads to nasty hangovers.

 

[Muggus]

The variety is totally up to you, however i'd be mindful of boiling the hell out of the honey. You tend to lose the delicate aromatics of the honey by boiling it, but there's also the risk of infection from microbacteria in the honey itself.
Best bet is pastuerise the honey by adding enough water to make it a liquid and heating it to around 70-80 degrees for a couple of minutes. You don't want to go too high or for too long though. I recall seeing a graph about pasteurising a while back that might come in handy.

 

[ben_sa]

after my boil is complete, i intended to let it cool to about 80C then adding the honey (after sitting it in hot water) just to make it easier to disolve into the brew a bit......

Hangover go away with the next drink btw

 

[Wolfy]

According to Ken Schramm (The Compleat Meadmaker, pg41, 42) even heating your honey to 80Deg C may be a bit too high (or at least excessive):
"Dr Jonathan White of the United States Department of Agriculture (retired) did a tremendous amount of research on honey and concluded that the amount of heat exposure needed to kill off the wild yeast in honey is as little as five minutes at 150F (66C), or about 22 minutes at 140F (60C). I Recommend the lower and slower approach. The aromatic compounds in honey become more volatile at higher temperatures."
Even more interesting is that he goes on to comment that he does not even heat or treat his honey now:
"I have not heated or boiled my must for several years now ... In all that time, I have not produced one batch I would categorize as infected or otherwise adversely affected"

 

[Pete2501]

According to Ken Schramm (The Compleat Meadmaker, pg41, 42) even heating your honey to 80Deg C may be a bit too high (or at least excessive):
"Dr Jonathan White of the United States Department of Agriculture (retired) did a tremendous amount of research on honey and concluded that the amount of heat exposure needed to kill off the wild yeast in honey is as little as five minutes at 150F (66C), or about 22 minutes at 140F (60C). I Recommend the lower and slower approach. The aromatic compounds in honey become more volatile at higher temperatures."
Even more interesting is that he goes on to comment that he does not even heat or treat his honey now:
"I have not heated or boiled my must for several years now ... In all that time, I have not produced one batch I would categorize as infected or otherwise adversely affected"

Are we talking raw honey or already pasteurised honey?

 

[Wolfy]

Are we talking raw honey or already pasteurised honey?

He didn't really specify, that was just the section of the book I was reading last night, up to the chapter about honey now.

 

[Pete2501]

Well if it's pasteurised then it probably doesn't matter.

 

[zephon]

orange blossom honey

My favourite! :beerbang:

 

[neonmeate]

i would leave honey out of a hoegaarden type beer. hoegaarden doesn't have any honey in it. i like honey better in a malty 6-7%ish belgian ale with some munich or melanoidin malt where it goes with the malt sweetness as well as the yeast phenolics.

personally i steer clear of big rough eucalypt honey flavours but then i don't even like leatherwood on toast. but ive been forced to drink way too many red-brown, thick, sweet and underhopped "honey ales" made by K&K brewers who look to the kitchen cupboard for inspiration, usually throwing in really rough mentholy types of honey.
i like paler, floral types of honey for beer. orange blossom, wildflower honeys are good or try Hungarian acacia honey (harris farm has it) which is really light and delicate but has a nice herbal flavour that works well with beer