Carbing with honey?

I’m getting ready to bottle 5gal of NB Nut Brown Ale tonight and wanted to try something different. What I’d like to do is split the batch in half, bottle half with priming sugar and the other with honey. Does this work? I’m hoping the honey will do something to the flavor. And, does anyone know measurements/procedures. I’m guessing I should heat up the honey or add it to hot water to thin it out. Please help!

Honey is about the same sugar content as LME at roughly 36p/p/g. You need around 15 points of sugar (the equivalent of 5oz of corn sugar), so thats 6.7oz by weight.

You could add it without heating but I think most people will pour it in boiled water just to give it a little sanitizing. It helps to be able to blend into the beer too.

Hopefully someone will corroborate or correct this info, I’m no expert on using honey in beer.

I am no expert either, but in the Brooklyn Beer Chestnut Brown Ale kit I started brewing with used honey as the primer in the directions.

I dissolved the honey in water on the stove top, just like with priming sugar. So as long as you get the right volumes of honey and water, it should be good.

Sanitize honey?

I thought it naturally was.

When I tried priming with honey, I found no flavor contribution from it at all. That was also the conclusion of several blind tasters. You use so little of it to prime that you don’t taste it. Try it and see what you think, bjut be sure to do a blind triangle tasting between the 2 batches.

Yeah, I never detected a honey note in the brown either. So it probably is a more expensive way to carb beer vs. corn or table sugar.

Not to mention less reliable, IMO.

[quote=“muddywater_grant”]Sanitize honey?

I thought it naturally was.[/quote]
I think raw honey can have harbor microbes. I wouldn’t be scared of it myself but I do know theres always a debate among meadmakers about whether to heat the honey or not. They may actually pasteurize honey for sale.

Edited to add: It can harbor botulism spores. I’ve never ever heard of someone being made sick from mead or honey used in a fermented beverage, but the fact that you cap beer means the botulism organism could theoretically grow (its anaerobic).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

Honey can harbor spores, but I think the pH of beer is normally too low for c. botulinum to grow or produce significant amounts of toxin. According to the rule of thumb used in canning, anything below 4.6 should be safe on that front.

Honey’s dangerous for infants because it’s possible for the bug to start growing in their intestines. Older children and adults can eat honey safely because their digestive systems are normally inhospitable to the bacterium, so it can’t get a foothold.

So don’t give your beer to infants! They’re lightweights anyway and will barf all over your couch. Thought I do love hanging out with infants and watching the tube. Sitting on the couch with my bottle and they have theirs, and they don’t ask to change the channel. We get along great until they learn to walk, then its all downhill. Stealing brew, bumming money, wrecking your car.

I bet you’d taste it if you primed a kolsch with buckwheat honey.
It is more spendy, unless it’s all you have and it’s now or never to bottle.