honey ipa

[smeggedup]

hi all

need a little help on a honey ipa i've got planned for the weekend (more about that soon )

but can't find any deffinate advice on what to do with the honey, weather it needs boiling, microwaving, adding to the fv or boil and flame off.
has anyone used honey
what did you do and how ?

cheers

[jmc]

I normally add honey after primary fermentation has died down so that aroma isn't blown away.

I've also used it when bottling as primary source of conditioning sugar.

I always pasturise it before using it. Mix honey plus equal weight of water (or brew), stir to dissolve honey and heat to 80-85C in a saucepan and keep at that temp range for 15mins

Floyd uses it a fair bit too. See
Honey Zest Ale II - Orange zest/ Coriander
#80 Spiced Belgian Honey Beer - Duvel Yeast
AG#22 - Belgian Strong Golden (Duvel Yeast)

[Uncle Joshua]

I do it the same way as jmc.

[Barley Water]

Well, I can see adding honey to beer but I do have a question for you; is not a beer with alot of late hops and perhaps even dry hops not going to completely cover up any flavor or aroma that honey might bring to the table? I guess my initial comment would be to save the honey for a beer which is more delicate and just use plain old table sugar for the IPA. Of course, honey is mostly sugar disolved in water so it will dry out your beer, possibly a very good thing for an IPA but since it's relatively expensive compared to table sugar and it's benefits over simple sugar will be lost anyway, why not save money? Just a thought, take it for what it's worth. And oh by the way, given the above reasoning, if you are going to use the honey in the beer, just throw it into the boil, that will get the job done and it's easy and safe. Anyhow, good luck with your brew.

[Uncle Joshua]

Having reread this...

Barley Water is right, adding honey to an IPA would be a waste of all the hops.

I have a honey beer recipe I came up with myself which is fairly good...

[Rookie]

I always add honeymalt to my honey beers.

[smeggedup]

well added the honey to the fv

bad idea, as its seems to have started to ferment without yeast
i came short on the night, liqoured back with boiled water, at the same time adding the honey.
this sent me way over temp for the yeast, even by the next morning, off to work i go, and come back to find a nice frothy head
one doesn't seem to be doing so bad, but the other (two fv's) seems to be getting mold on top of the kaursan

might have to ditch the lot !

[jmc]

well added the honey to the fv

bad idea, as its seems to have started to ferment without yeast
i came short on the night, liqoured back with boiled water, at the same time adding the honey.
this sent me way over temp for the yeast, even by the next morning, off to work i go, and come back to find a nice frothy head
one doesn't seem to be doing so bad, but the other (two fv's) seems to be getting mold on top of the kaursan

might have to ditch the lot !

I wouldn't give up yet. It might be OK.

Did you pasteurise the honey?

[smeggedup]

no

[Barley Water]

Here is the deal with honey; it doesn't ferment in the hive because it has such high osmotic pressure that bugs and yeast can't survive in it. Notice that when you make meade you water the stuff down? Anyway, for the OP, if your beer is infected I suspect it ain't the honey. That's just one of those things that happen once in awhile in this hobby, it keeps you humble and everyone at some point has had that problem, don't worry about it too much. I remember serving a friend some infected beer (I honestly didn't know there was a problem) about 20 years or so ago and it was so carbonated it streamed out his nose, funny as hell.

Actually, reading this thread gave me what I hope will be a good idea. Last year, I made an Abby Single, mostly because I wanted to grow up a bunch of yeast to make a Triple (which didn't work out so well but hey, I tried). Anyway, the Single won a metal in a very big contest over here which was quite the unexpected surprise. The scoresheets indicated that the beer would have even been even better if it was drier. In the spririt of making the best beer I can, my idea then would be to keep the same formulation except for swapping some of the gravity points from the base grain (pils malt) with honey in the secondary. That should do two things for me; first, it will dry the beer out and secondly, it should add some subtle aromas and flavor from the honey hopefully making the product unique. I'll add the honey to a little water which has been boiled then add it to the primary after the beer is mostly fermented. That should preserve the aroma and keep the yeast happy after having their so called "main meal".

The problem with this hobby is that there isn't enough time in the day or cold storage space to brew all the ideas I come up with. I really need to brew an Old Ale, Munich Helles, Octoberfest and another batch of Oud Bruin for my soleria. Furthermore, I want to make another Abbey Dubbel with carmalized raisins....God it just never ends.

[smeggedup]

good reading sir