I was looking at a couple recipes on this forum and both had honey in them. Does the honey add any flavor or is it just another sugar added to boost the OG? What other effect(s) does it have on beer?
What does honey do in beer?
- Thread starter logan3825
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dries it out ( a tangier taste ), and ups the alcohol, mainly. i have a tasty recipe honeybee recipe that was given to me, if you're interested
Steelers77
Vendor
May get a slight honey taste from it depending on the variety of honey being used.
logan3825
Well-Known Member
A honey taste is not something I desire in my beer. I was looking at the watermelon and lemon wheat beer recipes and both had a pound of honey in them. I was wondering what characteristics that the honey added. I am sort of looking for a base weiss recipe to add flavors to. I have some black raspberries frozen from the summer that I thought would work well instead of the watermelon. I was thinking of splitting a batch in 2 with raspberries in one and watermelon in the other. Thank you for the responses.
ibbones
Well-Known Member
My wife does not like the honey taste in beer so no more for me.
1990dtgl98
Well-Known Member
I used honey taste in my imperial IPA, and for the most part there is no flavor. You might get a slighty different, floral-ish nose, but since honey is almost completely fermentable, you won't get much of any taste.
Then again, if you use a lot of honey in proportion with a lower OG, you might notice it more. FWIW I used 2lbs of honey for a 1.096 OG beer and had no honey taste whatsoever.
Then again, if you use a lot of honey in proportion with a lower OG, you might notice it more. FWIW I used 2lbs of honey for a 1.096 OG beer and had no honey taste whatsoever.
Edcculus
Well-Known Member
Any honey addition under about 2lbs will likely show absolutely no honey taste. Have you ever tried mead? It tastes as much like honey the same way wine tastes like grapes, or cider tastes like apples. The same way that wort tastes nothing like beer. That is, not very much. Sugar is what we really link the flavor of all of these products to. Once that is gone, we are left with something that may hint at the original sugar laden product, but not taste like it.
The flavors and aromas in honey are really delicate. If you want a honey flavor from honey, its best to add it to the kettle once you have cooled it below 150F so the delicate compounds don't volatilize. If you don't want honey flavor or aroma, just add it to the boil like any other sugar addition. In the latter circumstance, I don't see honey doing anything different than table sugar. Your weights will have to be different since honey contains a lot of water however. Since honey can be expensive, I only see people who dont' want to use refined sugars boiling it.
The flavors and aromas in honey are really delicate. If you want a honey flavor from honey, its best to add it to the kettle once you have cooled it below 150F so the delicate compounds don't volatilize. If you don't want honey flavor or aroma, just add it to the boil like any other sugar addition. In the latter circumstance, I don't see honey doing anything different than table sugar. Your weights will have to be different since honey contains a lot of water however. Since honey can be expensive, I only see people who dont' want to use refined sugars boiling it.
cheezydemon3
Well-Known Member
I got a definite flavor in my honey pale ale. It was a "hard to describe" complexity that definitely came from the honey.
Justibone
Well-Known Member
Most "honey" flavor in beer comes from "honey malt"... grain that was malted and gives a honey flavor. True honey, as about a million brewers on here have already said, doesn't leave much of a flavor behind.
Try making a mead sometime, you'll see. The simple "jailhouse" mead styles will tell you what fermented honey tastes like.
(Jailhouse mead: 1/2 cup honey, 1/4 cup raisins, fill up to 20 oz. Boil. Cool. Put in empty, clean 20 oz. soda bottle. Add yeast of some sort. Screw on soda cap most of the way, not all the way -- allow CO2 to escape. Wait about 30 days, pour carefully into a different clean soda bottle, wait 30 days more. Taste. That's what fermented honey tastes like... this recipe occasionally results in something drinkable.
)
Try making a mead sometime, you'll see. The simple "jailhouse" mead styles will tell you what fermented honey tastes like.
(Jailhouse mead: 1/2 cup honey, 1/4 cup raisins, fill up to 20 oz. Boil. Cool. Put in empty, clean 20 oz. soda bottle. Add yeast of some sort. Screw on soda cap most of the way, not all the way -- allow CO2 to escape. Wait about 30 days, pour carefully into a different clean soda bottle, wait 30 days more. Taste. That's what fermented honey tastes like... this recipe occasionally results in something drinkable.
)
Add a ton of it and you get a braggot... which is the nectar of the gods when done right.
