wilko golden ale additions

[Neil1454]

Hi,

I was wanting to experiment with the kind of flavours honey adds to beer.
I have a golden ale can kit I'm going to add a hop addition to.
Was thinking of adding a single jar of honey (will it be enough) at the start when the water is boiling to sanitize the honey.
Worth it and are there any dangers adding honey ?

Thanks

 

[parpot]

I used a large jar just over 900g, added it with the single can and when bottling primed with honey, great honey taste and sweet, I used brew enhancer as well though.

 

[terrym]

A few on here use honey as an adjunct in beer. However honey is a natural product (obviously!) and may contain 'organisms' so I would dissolve it some water and boil for a good 15 minutes before adding to the wort. Others may think that unnecessary.
There's a forum section on mead so you might get a few tips there
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/forums/coffee-kombucha-mead-forum.46/

 

[Neil1454]

A few on here use honey as an adjunct in beer. However honey is a natural product (obviously!) and may contain 'organisms' so I would dissolve it some water and boil for a good 15 minutes before adding to the wort. Others may think that unnecessary.
There's a forum section on mead so you might get a few tips there
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/forums/coffee-kombucha-mead-forum.46/

Ok will do. Does boiling it kill the taste any ?
Thanks

 

[terrym]

Ok will do. Does boiling it kill the taste any ?
Thanks

Can't really say. However I would have thought that any denaturing would not be all that significant and not really noticeable when diluted down.
You could do your own trial to find out, make up two identical honey solutions, boil one for 15 minutes, allow to cool then make up to the original volume, then a taste test between the two. Exciting times

 

[Neil1454]

I used a large jar just over 900g, added it with the single can and when bottling primed with honey, great honey taste and sweet, I used brew enhancer as well though.

Yer I'd planned to use beer enhancer as well. Picked a bag up yesterday.

The last golden ale I did I took terrym's advice and added 50g of cascade. Rather tasty. Quite hoppy which is the way I like it.
So wanted to try honey with it too.
Was thinking...
Beer enhancer.
500g brewing sugar
And I'll go with a single jar of honey... but will one jar even make a difference? Do I need two?

Then I will add gervin yeast.

Thanks

 

[parpot]

I have never had a problem with sealed jars of Honey but I should say never say never? I think the real taste of Honey comes from the priming!

 

[AdeDunn]

I make mead, and use honey in beer, and would say that you CAN get away with adding honey at flame out (end of boil, whilst the wort is still at 100 degrees), but I usually prefer to boil it for 5 to 10 minutes myself to be certain. Some claim you lose some flavour doing this, but to be honest unless you are using the honey in secondary or post fermentation then you're not going to be able to tell the difference. If you want really nice honey, I can recommend 3 that I have used, orange blossom is a nice one, heather honey made a delicious Saison and stands up well to both the boil and primary fermentation and I also used African rainforest honey once (huge tubs on Amazon) to make a Raspberry mead and that was really delicious honey too. All that said, I've also managed to get a decent honey flavour using normal cheapo honey, but this could partly be down to using Mangrove Jack's M29 French Saison yeast, which seems to work really well with a bit of honey there. Zero sweetness from the honey though, as it actually makes the beer drier when used in primary, but you do get a really nice honey flavour in there when you use at least 350g of honey for a 20 litre batch.

I used Polish honey in a recent brew, but not tasted that yet as it's an old ale and I used a yeast blend that had Brett in it, and it hasn't actually been bottled or aged yet. I'll let you know if it's nice some time around Christmas... lol