Honey Ale

Demig said:

Interested in doing a honey beer but why did you heat it? Above 40 you will affect the honey and unheated honey will not spoil the beer. Come to think of it you don't need to do it for mead as well from a bug perspective. Do you have a recipe for this clone I'd love to give this one a go.

Also it seems that adding honey to the boil is probably losing some of the loveliness of honey, surely this should be added when the yeast is pitched or am I missing something?

Cheers

Demig

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I heated it to pasteurise it.... downside...may lose a bit of flavour/aroma, but probably better than boiling, upside....hopefully kill off any wild yeast lurking...though I know a lots of mead makers are happy to use unheated honey without any apparent problems. Not sure if cascade it in line with the fullers brew but I wanted to try cascade since I hadn't used it before.
The recipe was on this post..
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=61513

Cheers for all the comments,

Some interesting points, the recipe in the book calls for the honey to be added 10 minutes from flame out from memory. I might pasteurise then add to the primary? Also interesting about the Notty ale yeast, another other yeast people recommend?

Jay :)

Not sure if I can help this post, and I really don’t want anyone to think I am being arrogant, but I have been working scientifically with honey over the past year, primarily NZ Manuka

What I can tell you is that:
Honey is not just honey, just like beer, it is a careful blend of what the bees are taking the nectar from, with Manuka Honey it is very expensive because the bees harvest the nectar from tea tree pollen; you can also get fake Manuka from Europe (boring I know but have a look at the jars of honey in your local supermarket when you next visit, I was perplexed at first)
Other real honey is seasonal i.e. the bees produce the honey from the nectar of whatever is available to harvest at that time of year so the taste is different throughout the year, it is also reginal depending on the local pollen.
The slightly cheaper honey is a blend.
And the cheap couple of quid honey is not real honey (have a look at the jar) it is a sugary syrup virtually man made.
Also if you take the temperature of the honey over 55ËšC for any long period of time i.e. an hour or 2 it kills off all of the goodness and flavour of the honey and more or less turns it back into a sugar syrup, above 60 - 70ËšC it is almost instantaneous and all the wonderful flavour is lost, so you might as well use the cheap stuff and save money.

Once again I am not preaching just passing on the info I know, if you want to add honey to a brew I would recommend doing it as cool as you can to preserve the natural flavour.

I have never used Honey in a brew before but now considering it so thank you for giving me the idea, just trying to figure out how and when to add it, honey is water soluble due to the vast amounts of sugar so I am thinking it would be best to water it down and add it to the FV after the boil, but I am not sure.

I just hope a real beekeeper can help out and put me straight with any of the above.

Me

Looks good to me and I am a beekeeper:) I certainly plan to have a crack at this recipe with some of my honey added in the fv diluted as you suggest, the points re wild yeast are worth noting though.

On a side note considerably more Manuka is sold worldwide than is produced.. The figures don't add up.


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NinjaNeil said:

Also if you take the temperature of the honey over 55ËšC for any long period of time i.e. an hour or 2 it kills off all of the goodness and flavour of the honey and more or less turns it back into a sugar syrup, above 60 - 70ËšC it is almost instantaneous and all the wonderful flavour is lost, so you might as well use the cheap stuff and save money.

Once again I am not preaching just passing on the info I know, if you want to add honey to a brew I would recommend doing it as cool as you can to preserve the natural flavour.

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Thanks for the advice. I'm going to try GH's recipes but add the honey into the FV; that way I won't boil off the flavours, but can get a reasonably accurate hydrometer reading. I'll report back but it won't be for a couple of weeks as I've got a Cream Ale to do first

Demig said:

Looks good to me and I am a beekeeper:) I certainly plan to have a crack at this recipe with some of my honey added in the fv diluted as you suggest, the points re wild yeast are worth noting though.

On a side note considerably more Manuka is sold worldwide than is produced.. The figures don't add up.


Join the BrewChat - open minds and adults only :wink: - Click here

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I clicked on your link. The guy in the centre foreground looks as though he's thinking, "Feck, I haven't got any more money for beer and SWMBO's just called me to say come home and mow the lawn!" :lol:

MyQul said:

I clicked on your link. The guy in the centre foreground looks as though he's thinking, "Feck, I haven't got any more money for beer and SWMBO's just called me to say come home and mow the lawn!" :lol:

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The slack front page? Forgot that I even had that in my sig tbh. Shooting the breeze in there at the moment

Ive done a few Pale Ales with honey. Came out drier than i expected. Couldbt taste a lot but might of been overpowered with hops. I might add some to the next Porter i brew.

BeerCat said:

Ive done a few Pale Ales with honey. Came out drier than i expected. Couldbt taste a lot but might of been overpowered with hops. I might add some to the next Porter i brew.

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Honey definately dries the beer out. I would't use notty again if I was going to use honey as it attenuates too highly

Hi all,

just a daft question but if you freeze honey does this kill bacteria? Does it reduce any of the flavour? So if you froze the honey and then add as you cool the wort would this solve the problem(s)?

C

MyQul said:

Honey definately dries the beer out. I would't use notty again if I was going to use honey as it attenuates too highly

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I did a honey APA which finished 1004 with US05 so definitely no honey flavour there. Am too inexperienced to really know what effect it had buy my sweet Mead has a strong honey taste so i guess your right you need something that finishes high or you wont notice it. I am going to try Irish Ale Yeast next with a Honey Porter.

BeerCat said:

I did a honey APA which finished 1004 with US05 so definitely no honey flavour there. Am too inexperienced to really know what effect it had buy my sweet Mead has a strong honey taste so i guess your right you need something that finishes high or you wont notice it. I am going to try Irish Ale Yeast next with a Honey Porter.

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What attenuation did you get with the irish ale yeast. If I was going to use honey again I'd use something with about 75%AA

chrissyr63 said:

Hi all,

just a daft question but if you freeze honey does this kill bacteria? Does it reduce any of the flavour? So if you froze the honey and then add as you cool the wort would this solve the problem(s)?

C

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Honey doesn't contain bacteria. About all it may contain is wild yeast.

*EDIT*

This is what I've read all too often regarding honey. However Wiki says otherwise:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

rodwha said:

Honey doesn't contain bacteria. About all it may contain is wild yeast.

*EDIT*

This is what I've read all too often regarding honey. However Wiki says otherwise:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

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I think it may even be anti-bacterial as I'm sure I've read they used to spread it on wounds before things like peniccilin were discovered (there's some stuff about this in your link)

MyQul said:

I think it may even be anti-bacterial as I'm sure I've read they used to spread it on wounds before things like peniccilin were discovered (there's some stuff about this in your link)

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They still do, we have a display of honey based wound dressing we use at our beekeeping association when we're at country shows. And yes it is antibacterial. The only potential problem with honey (apart from wild yeasts) is for very young children as it can theoretically continue botulism spores, think it caused a problem in the USA once. But then your homebrew shouldn't be drunk by anyone under 1 anyway :)

Had a St Peters Honey porter yesterday which was absolutely sublime, excellent beer.

Demig said:

But then your homebrew shouldn't be drunk by anyone under 1 anyway :)

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Why not? Start em young, I say! :lol:

MyQul said:

Haven't done the honey ale but have done the honey porter from GH's book. I opened the last mini keg I have of it yesterday eve. It's lush, you can really taste the honey but It also created a quite a dryish beer (something I like in dark beers). I just used ASDA cheapo honey

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Did you do a thread on the Honey Porter? Thinking of modifying the recipe slightly so wanted to have a read but cant find it.

There's some really good info in this thread! I've used honey loads of times but failed to get the flavour to come through right.

I make apple and honey wine often
I never heat the honey, never had a bad/spoiled wine
A very good strong drink I've just bottled a 15.8 abv batch

BeerCat said:

Did you do a thread on the Honey Porter? Thinking of modifying the recipe slightly so wanted to have a read but cant find it.

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Yes I did.

http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=59905