I have 3 lbs of really special honey (meadowfoam) that I wanted to use in a beer. I want the aromatics and flavor of the honey (vanilla, toasted caramel) to shine, so I’m going to add one lb at flameout and the rest after the primary fermentation. I’m not really into mead, so that’s out. Off the top of my head, I am thinking of the following:
9lb Maris Otter
1lb Munich
.5lb Special B
.5lb Aromatic (this and the SB will help enhance the honey’s notes)
4oz pale chocolate (to give a toasty note)
I was thinking either a clean Am Ale yeast, maybe pacman, or a lowish ester belgian yeast fermented at a low temp (63-65), raised up after fermentation starts to slow.
Will there be enough body/dextrins/unfermentables left over so this beer isn’t a cidery mess, or should I add some dextrin malt?
Just kidding, this sounds great I think. I don’t really have experience with that much honey so I’d be curious as to how it turns out. I’ve added a pound at high krausen before and gotten pretty decent results. Three pounds though is a pretty high percentage so I’d think you should mash pretty high to counter that if you decide to stick to this recipe. If it were me, since I have no real background knowledge and/or experience with more than a pound I’d go down to two. But that’s just because I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Well, hope you enjoyed my reading that relatively uninformative paragraph… :cheers:
Well by my rough calculation that’s about 20% honey by weight, an awful lot (plus expensive). I guess if I were doing that I would immediately drop the pound you are adding at flameout because if you can’t get the wort cool quickly enough you are going to loose the aromatics anyway. I would be tempted to add just a pound in the secondary and see if you like the results. If you think more would be better after doing the first beer then you would have some experience to work with. The other thing you might want to do is find a few honey beer recipes and get a feel for the percentages used in those, I always like to let others do my R&D for me if possible.
What yeast? You probably want something with low attenuation so as not to ferment the honey completely.
I love meadowfoam, every spring I go to the farmer’s market and get a year’s worth.
[quote=“Rookie L A”]What yeast? You probably want something with low attenuation so as not to ferment the honey completely.
I love meadowfoam, every spring I go to the farmer’s market and get a year’s worth.[/quote]
Was thinking either a neutral Am Ale or a moderately low estery/phenolic belgian in the low-mid-60’s.
Also, to the first replier, not an uninformative paragraph at all! Mashing high is a great idea.
