How much honey as priming sugar?

[Kingfisher4]

I have a honey ale (Greg Hughes recipe) nearing the end of fermentation. The samples I have tried after hydrometer checks do give a subtle aftertaste of honey.

I can’t find any information on this forum or elsewhere regarding priming conversion using honey rather than table sugar or DME, but that may just be my poor searching, as honey occurs so frequently due to the mead section. Alternatively, it may just be an odd idea!

I would plan to heat (then cool) the honey diluted with some water to ensure I am not introducing bugs post fermentation and mixing is optimal, as I will be bottling.

My simplistic proposed calculation for honey priming rates in the absence of any other accurate information is this:

The Honey I have is 82 g of carbohydrate per 100 grams of honey, 76 g of which are sugars. I plan to use the Brewers Friend calculator for equivalent of table sugar (which has 100 g of sugars per 100 g, unsurprisingly.)

I would then multiply the suggested table sugar rate by 1.2 X (100/82). I appreciate that 1.3 times may be more accurate (100/76) but the difference is negligible.

Does that seem a reasonable plan??

[johnnyboy1965]

I dont think that you will get any honey flavour/taste by using honey as a priming sugar. You have got to work out the sugar content of your honey

[Kingfisher4]

I dont think that you will get any honey flavour/taste by using honey as a priming sugar. You have got to work out the sugar content of your honey

Thanks, the sugar content calculation is what I have tried to estimate above.

I appreciate it may not add any additional honey flavour, but seems worth trying, in a small priming dose, after treating to sterilise any potential bugs. Would be very interested if there are any potential adverse experiences out there. If not, I think I’ll give it a go and report back once the beer is conditioned.

[john luc]

you are over thinking this problem. In your desire to be a purist you can easily wreck your beer. All the honey work is in your brew so just use simple sugar to get the bottle conditioning right and you will not lose any flavour from your brew.

[Kingfisher4]

you are over thinking this problem. In your desire to be a purist you can easily wreck your beer. All the honey work is in your brew so just use simple sugar to get the bottle conditioning right and you will not lose any flavour from your brew.

Sound advice. On balance, will try that with this batch.