Just transferred my raspberry wheat to secondary fermentation, and I’m planning for my next brew day.
Next up: NB Honey Brown Ale
Kit is pretty straightforward, but I want to maximize the honey aroma. I’ve found a few mentions of people using honey as priming sugar at bottling. Thoughts? Will this boost the honey aroma? How much should I use for a 5gal batch?
If your wanting to maximize the honey flavor. You could use alittle honey malt. A little goes along way though. Honey its self is 100% fermentable. Its hard to add it and gain honey flavor. Adding it at the end of the boil or when your wort is chilled down to pasturizing temps is the best way to gain aroma of the type of honey. Now the variety of honey for instance wildflower honey will add aromas of wildflowers that you probably wont even notice with a dark beer and crystal malts compared to a light colored beer with no crystal malts. Priming with it will not add any noticeable flavors. Our host has a priming calculator and honey is listed on there and can give you the accurate amount to prime with it. https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrE1xQUJJhcnWsA4O9x.9w4;_ylu=X3oDMTByOHZyb21tBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg--/RV=2/RE=1553503381/RO=10/RU=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.northernbrewer.com%2Fpages%2Fpriming-sugar-calculator/RK=2/RS=2NsM_82MbTwrPZNlNndRaY3s1DM-
You will find it not worth the trouble. Get/make yourself some mead. You will then see that it takes a lot of honey to get honey to shine through and aroma will not be there even then. I agree with @damian_winter that honey malt is much easier to use.
I agree about priming with honey. A lot of work and you will not get any taste or aroma out of it. Go with sugar.
If this is the first time you have brewed this kit I suggest you go exactly by the instructions. That way you will see how you like it before changing the recipe any. You can always brew it again and then tweak it.
Honey malt will definitely get you some honey flavor but go easy on it. Too much leaves a cloying flavor.
Honey sounds nice in the name of a beer but do really want your beer to taste or even smell like honey. Probably not or you would see one offered like that. The ones I’ve had I didn’t notice anything. I think they just add a token amount so they can use it in the name. I make Mead and have blended into beer which is alot of honey
I mean, the beer it’s called Honey Brown Ale, so I do want to get the most out of honey at I can. Not wanting to overwhelm the beer with honey, but I would like to be able to tell the honey is there.
Thanks everyone for the feedback on using honey as priming sugar. I will forego the honey this time and stick with my topical bottling day plans.
Thoughts on fizz drops versus mixing sugar water? Ive used both and haven’t noticed much of a difference, but I’m curious to learn from others with more experience.
One of my first brews I used honey as a priming. I put the honey in each bottle, as I do with priming sugar. I think I put the honey in NB American Lager for something to try. It tasted good! I used brown sugar as a priming also in a brew in a NB Brown Nut.
Fizz drops are costly for the convenience. I know at least one of the forum’s experts swears by Domino Dots. For my priming I always used regular table sugar, it’s always on hand and works just as well.
It seems like much, but this is actually much easier for standard 3-5 gallon batches than drops/dots. For a dozen bottles or less, the drops are probably the way to go.
I noticed the same when I brewed my last batch, jmck. The fizz drops worked well when I did my 2.5gal batches, but having to add a drop for each bottle of 2 cases seemed to be more trouble than it was worth.
