Honey Flavor

tom_sawyer · September 19, 2014, 6:21pm

I had a craft beer from Rhodells brewery out of Peoria IL not long ago, it was a vanilla honey weizen. Very pronounced honey and vanilla flavors. The wife loved it. I didn’t quiz them on how they did it, but now I’m trying to make something myself. I just finished fermenting a hefeweizen and I took 2gal of this and added about a pound of honey and a teaspoon of vanilla. I left all the yeast cake from the batch in this 2gal and it took right off fermenting out the honey. I hope this does the trick. I also saw there is a honey flavor oil but I’m worried about its effect on heading.

Anyone do a honey weizen before? Does the honeyu come through when its fermented out?

My hefe came out good too, it was an open fermentation with WLP300 and it has a lot of banana aroma.

jd14t · September 19, 2014, 7:56pm

Since the honey ferments out, you may not be able to taste it.

Try .25lb - .5lb of honey malt in a 5g batch.

tom_sawyer · September 19, 2014, 8:23pm

Yeah I put a lot more than that in (1lb in 2gal), hoping I’d get the taste in spite of only having the mild sweetness of the hefe recipe to back it up. We’ll see, I think the vanilla might further accentuate the honey flavor and sweetness.

jd14t · September 19, 2014, 8:56pm

I’m suggesting the use of honey malt not honey.

Any amount of honey won’t be tasted because it will ferment out but honey malt will most definitely leave a honey flavor.

65ss427 · September 20, 2014, 2:20am

Adding honey during the boil won’t do anything for the flavor. However, adding honey at flameout will in fact add some subtle hints of honey in the finished product, but it’s not going to be a ‘forward’ flavor by any means. It will dry the beer out though, and if you want a more pronounced honey flavor, the honey malt is the way to go, as jd14t says.

dmtaylo2 · September 20, 2014, 11:43am

A little honey malt does help. It also helps to use stronger darker honey than just the usual clover honey. Finally… I often get a honey graham flavor from pilsner malts. I assume your hefeweizen used some pilsner malt, so that should help as well. Keep it up to ~50% of the grain bill for best results.

rebuiltcellars · September 20, 2014, 7:46pm

The later in the process you add the honey, the more flavor will remain. So if you are bottle conditioning, use honey instead of sugar. Ounce for ounce, that will get you the most benefit, though there is so little you need for bottle conditioning that you’ll need more as well. I would mix it in post-chill; any heat will vaporize a lot of the volatiles in the honey.

tom_sawyer · September 22, 2014, 2:08pm

Thanks for the advice, lots of good stuff there. I fogot about honey malt, that will definitely be in my next hefe recpe.

dunngood · September 23, 2014, 12:12am

Just to be sure I believe Honey malt should be mashed as it contains no sugar.

dmtaylo2 · September 23, 2014, 1:58am

Actually, if memory serves, honey malt is really a crystal malt, so it probably doesn’t need to be mashed. But just go ahead and mash it anyway.

dunngood · September 23, 2014, 2:51am

Ok, I see that is more flavorful if mashed but can be steeped as well.