Honey Ale

[sam c]

hello again everyone,

im trying to come up with an extract Honey Ale recipie and was looking for a little help.

i would like to use Cascade and Tettnanger hops.

this what i have come up with so far,

3kg liquid light/pale malt extract
700g honey
30g cascade-boiling
25g tettnanger-finishing
safale s-05 yeast

please add any adjustments to the recipie you think would make it better and also boiling times, cheers,
sam

[the_great_okapi]

What sort of Ale do you want to make? An American Pale, as I guess from the use of US05? You have about 18% honey in there, so I would guess you want a high IBU (40 ish). Unless I know how you brew I can't give you gram quantities - do you do a full/partial wort boil or just boil the extract?

I have cut and pasted some useful stuff that I researched for making a mead, I hope you find it useful. Adding the honey during the last 10 mins of the boil should kill the bugs and stop diastatic activity, or you can pasturise and add later. I can tell you from experience, the quality of the honey is paramount, as is where the bees collected the nectar from. If it smells anything less than wonderful, don't add any to your beer!

http://www.honeyflowfarm.com/beerbrewing.php

[sam c]

thanks for that i will take a look at your link in a sec. actually i have only ever brewed kits so far and am gonna move onto extract brewing.i would just be boiling the extract. im trying to get a couple of recipes together at the moment.

yes i guess it would be based on an american pale ale with the added honey. i dont want it overly bitter but not overpowering on the honey side.im still trying to get my head around IBU's at the moment. do you think my quantities for the honey and malt extract sound about right?

sorry forgot to say i am planning on making a 30 litre boiler so would be boiling at least 25 litres and then topping up the f.v with extra water for what is lost to evaporation.

[floydmeddler]

Howdy!

That should give you a 4.52% beer according to my Beertools program. This percentage is based on a 23L brew.

Drinking my finest to date honey beer at the min and really enjoying it. Great flavours. People advised me to add the honey at the last 15 mins and I did the first time when I did an extract which was pretty much identical to yours apart from the hops. Anyway, I decided to add it at the last min this time and I can really taste the honey more. Next time, I plan to wait 4 days into the fermentation, take around 500ml of the fermenting beer out of the fermenter, boil it with the honey, cool it and get the lot back in there for the last 3 days. That way I should really trap that honey flavour.

That recipe you have sounds good. I can't comment on the hops as I've never tried them. The extract amount is spot on. I only add 600ml to my honey beers. However, I'm sure 700 would be fine. Just a little sweeter as not all the sugars are fermentable.

One other thing... If I were you, I'd add some more hops in there for 20 mins to add flavour. Nice to have bitterness, flavour and aroma.

Keep me posted.

P.S, download Beertools. You get a 30 day trial and you'll learn a lot from using it.

[sam c]

ok cheers for that. i was thinking about adding the honey in the last ten mins so thats good to hear. you said you used 600ml honey but mine is 700g. im not sure what the difference here is?

i did sign up to beertools and when i run it through the recipe generator i get this for the hops:

53 cascade - 60 min boil
18 tettnanger - 15 min
18 tettnanger - 1 min

sounds like a bit too much on the cascade. maybe dropping it to 40g would be better for me? i would appreciate your veiws again, thanks,

sam

[floydmeddler]

Sore head today

No difference apart from quantity.

I can't really help you with the hop quantities until I know the exact alpha acid percentage. If you give me the percentages I can help you further.

Cheers

[sam c]

Sore head today

No difference apart from quantity.

I can't really help you with the hop quantities until I know the exact alpha acid percentage. If you give me the percentages I can help you further.

Cheers

the cascades from my hbs are 6.5% AA
i cant find any tettnanger hops there now so i was thinking about using williamette which are 5.5% AA

thanks for your help

[the_great_okapi]

Whilst you can use Willamette instead of Tettnanger the effects on the aroma and flavour will be quite different. Willamette is very similar to Fuggles, that is a bit grassy and floral, and Tettnanger is more 'refined' and gives a more spicy and milder effect. A better substitute for Tett would be Saaz or perhaps Hallertauer if you want the aroma/flavour to be mild and pleasant rather than floral. I have used both Cascade and Willamette in the same brew and the combined effect was very assertive citrus flavours that didn't sit well together with the grassy/floral components of the Willamette. I would maybe have gone a little more subtle and just used all Cascade, but adding a noble hop instead would also probably work. Cascade are pretty strong IMO.

Bunging your AA% into Beersmith suggests a 43 IBU brew for pellet and 39 IBU for leaf (whole) hops, both of which should be OK. That is a reasonable amount of Cascade to be adding for a brew like this. If your hops are quite old then you will need to add a little more - for example if they are Cascades that have been stored for a year at -20 C they will have dropped down from 6.5 to 5.8% AA and you need to adjust the amounts (by 6.5/5.8 x quantity) to compensate. In your example, that would be 59 rather than 53 grams of cascade.

Good luck

[floydmeddler]

The honey ale I'm drinking at the min uses just these: Hallertau and Sazz. Amazing beer. Here is my recipe. You could substitute the pale malt for 3kg of extract.

Summer Honey Zest Ale
6-B Blonde Ale

Size: 25.0 L
Efficiency: 86.0%
Attenuation: 80.0%

Original Gravity: 1.052 (1.038 - 1.054)
Terminal Gravity: 1.010 (1.008 - 1.013)
Color: 3.69 (3.0 - 6.0)
Alcohol: 5.41% (3.8% - 5.5%)
Bitterness: 19.8 (15.0 - 28.0)

Ingredients:
4.4 kg English 2-row Pale
38.0 g Saaz (3%) - added first wort, boiled 90 min
22.0 g Saaz (3%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
33.0 g Hallertau (2.2%) - added during boil, boiled 20 min
33.0 g Orange zest - added during boil, boiled 15 min
13.0 g Saaz (3%) - added during boil, boiled 2 min
16.0 g Hallertau (2.2%) - added during boil, boiled 2 min
600 g Honey - added during boil, boiled 1 min
1.3 ea Fermentis S-04 Safale S-04

Secondary fermenter (ferment for 7 days):
20 g Hallertau (2.2) - 7 days
15g orange zest - 7 days

[sam c]

thank you both for your advice on this, couple more questions if you dont mind.

am i right in thinking that hallertau and saaz are both lager hops? would that recipe not taste more like a honey lager rather than a honey ale? i wanted to try and get two brews out of the hops i buy, one honey ale and then an american pale ale and this is the reason for using the cascades. do you think that hallertau hops could be used for an american pale ale? or will i end up with two very simillar beers?

sorry to ask so much, its just that i have no experience in using hops and dont really know what goes with what and so on.

cheers again

[the_great_okapi]

Hallertau and Saaz are varieties used a great deal with lagers, however, there is nothing to stop you using them for a Pale Ale, especially a US Pale.

Unlike yeast which can be divided into those which are only happy when fermented cool and those which prefer it warm, hops are not strictly divided into lager hops and non-lager hops.

Hops are usually divided down the noble/ non-noble aroma line, with noble hops more delicate on the palate. The real reason for the divide is money, both in terms of quantity of hops needed to bitter a beer and the fact that some of the low alpha noble hops are difficult to grow. That doesn't really matter too much to microbrewers so you often find them making bitters that include noble hops. There would be little point putting any in a Stout as it would be overpowered, but pales (including lagered pale beers) can show off the hops quite well.

Using a 'Noble' type hop to finsh your pale ale such as Tettnanger or Saaz won't make it taste lagery but it will give it a refined 'nose'. It is all to do with the balance of the alpha and beta acids if you want to get technical. If you were making a UK Pale it would be out of character to use German or Czech hops, and most would go for EKG for late additions (some consider EKG to be 'noble'). Americans might use Mt. Hood instead of Hallertau as they are they are almost the same, just grown over in the US. Many american brewers seem to do just that.

Any noble hop would do if you want a clean and subtle aroma of hoppiness in the beer, I guess it is down to what you can get your hands on.

[the_great_okapi]

Just as an afterthought, could you get hold of some American pale ales to try side-by-side?

Most of the commerical brewers in the US will say on their websites which hops they use, and even if not, a quick search for the name of the beer and 'clone' should give you an idea of what the different hops taste like.

Here is a list of some APA's I nicked off of the BJCP website:

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Stone Pale Ale, Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale, Full Sail Pale Ale, Three Floyds X-Tra Pale Ale, Anderson Valley Poleeko Gold Pale Ale, Left Hand Brewing Jackman's Pale Ale, Pyramid Pale Ale, Deschutes Mirror Pond

There are many others, but you should at least be able to get Sierra Nevada which uses Cascade for late hop additions. It will give you a better idea of what to expect than anything you can read on a website

[sam c]

thanks again for your help. i can get hold of both mt.hood and hallerttau so i think i will use one of those instead of the tettnanger. good idea to try the american ales first, however i wont be back in england for a bit and wont be able to get anything like that here. but when im back before i put this brew together i will have a look around to get some samples.cheers