Honey Brown

Hi all,

I once was at a local event with a friend, and he went on a beer run for us.  He came back with a Honey Brown that was fantastic.  I never found out what he got me, and never having had a honey brown before I started drinking a bunch of brands, but never found one quite as good.  So, now that I make my own I am looking for any advice on making a honey brown, that has a really nice strong honey note on the finish like I remember this beer having.  Members of the local club around here all tell my to stay away from using real honey, as it ferments away most all of its flavor, instead they suggest using Honey Malt as a steeping grain in my extract recipe.  I asked about priming with honey and was informed that since honey is 100% fermentable and can lead to blowing off caps or over carbonation, as well as long bottle conditioning times that I'd be better off sticking with LME or corn sugar.

Any thoughts?

BeerNut

American IPA in bottles
Oktoberfest in the primary
Irish Red in planning

Honey is my favourite adjunct by far. It is best used by adding to the primary after the fermentation has died down if you want to preserve the flavour. You should pasteurize it to kill off the wild yeast before you add it. The easiest way to deal with it in Beersmith is to add it as an ingredient in the late boil to get the gravity numbers (but actually add to primary).

There should be no problem using honey as a primer (provided it is pasteurized) as long as you use the correct amount, although may take longer to carbonate. I have not used honey but I have successfully used maple syrup to prime. Getting the right amount may be tricky. According to John Palmer: "Honey is difficult to prime with because there is no standard for concentration. The gravity of honey is different jar to jar. To use honey, you will need to dilute it and measure its gravity with a hydrometer. For all sugars in general, you want to add 2-3 gravity points per gallon of beer to prime."

Here is a tool: http://www.brewheads.com/priming.php

The problem is that the amount of water, and therefore the proportion of sugar varies a bit.

I've found that honey boosts gravity, but the flavor doesn't stay.  I've used it to prime a Porter and had a few bottle bombs and the ones that didn't go boom in the night were gushers.

Honey is a way to boost gravity without the cidery taste of table sugar.  I still use it sometimes, but only as a late boil addition.

If you use true apiary honey and add at knockout it CAN give you more flavor than you wanted to the point of domination.  If your using box store honey you might as well add sugar.