Brewing with Honey

[ianh9]

Its the time of year again when beekeepers start to extract large amounts of honey which is generally sold cheap on sites like gumtree for somewhere between $12 to $15/kg. As a beekeeper living in Perth I generally have way more than I can eat or sell, so I use it in brewing. Using honey sourced from a local beekeeper has many advantages. It is actually genuine honey that's been foraged for and created by a bee, instead of the flavourless, amorphous sugar solution imported from China that many supermarkets sell as honey. Its honey sourced locally from various flowers throughout the Spring and Summer with flavours that change as the year progresses. And its supporting dedicate, local hobbyists who are passionate about producing a quality product that way exceeds honey bought from shops and boutiques. Once you've eaten local honey you'll never buy it from the supermarket again.

My two favourite brews are simply to substitute the sugar for honey in Cooper's Pale Ale and Stout kits. They are so simple, except for one cautionary point.

1) Take Coopers tin, open it, put it into brew bin.

2) Take 1.5kg of honey, mix with 1 litre of water, and heat slowly to 70 - 80°C and hold for 5 minutes. This (cautionary point) is important to kill most of the natural yeast in the honey that will ferment instead of the yeast you pitch. Honey doesn't normally ferment because the high sugar content prevents the yeast from multiplying. It lies dormant until the water content of the honey exceeds 20%. Supermarket honey doesn't do this because its all been pasturised, allowing supermarket honey to have high water content without fermenting. It really is just sugary water or maybe more appropriately watery sugar.

3) Add the honey solution to your brew bin, make up to 22 or 23 litres, pitch the yeast and ferment as normal. Brewing can stop temporarily for half a day for some reason, and then restart. Stirring 3 or 4 times during each brew helps keep things going.

4) Prime the bottles as usual, cap and leave to rest for a month.

The final product is excellent. The Pale Ale forms the base to a drink very similar to Bees Knees but with more complex flavours and variety between batches, while the Stout becomes smoother and heavier with emboldenedflowery flavours sitting behind the stronger stout taste. 1.5kg of honey probably results in 6% ABV. I give my best customers a free mixed 6-pack here and there to keep them loyal.

And with that, its time for me to order my Summer brewing kits while Coopers is having its free delivery offer.

 

[Smashed Crabs]

Mate with all that honey ever thought of putting down some wicked meads?

[ianh9]

To me mead is just a precursor for honeyshine. But that discussion belongs on a different website.

[PaddyBrew2]

Are you ianh of the famous spreadsheet 

[Thirsty Jim]

Cheers Ian,

You are dead right about local honey compared to the supermarket excuse,  The local honey disappears from my pantry in no time.  The supermarket honey never gets finished and just crystallizes in the cupboard.  

I am definitely going to have a crack at that recipe and just in time for Christmas too.   

[ben 10]

6 hours ago, ianh9 said:

This (cautionary point) is important to kill most of the natural yeast in the honey that will ferment instead of the yeast you pitch.

I have made three meads now with local honey and have not heated the honey. I don't believe it is necessary at all as all meads have been as expected.

[ianh9]

7 minutes ago, Ben 10 said:

I have made three meads now with local honey and have not heated the honey. I don't believe it is necessary at all as all meads have been as expected.

I know what you mean. The thing is I'd rather not risk a brew going off because of wild yeast out-competing the brewing yeast before it can become established.

Another way instead of heating the honey is to get a good yeast starter culture going using sugary water and add it once its looking good and foamy.

[EWildcat7]

what about this recipe?

https://www.diybeer.com/au/recipe/strawberry-blonde.html

I have done a quick search and it appears that strawberry clover honey is next to impossible to find, but many agree that orange blossom honey is an acceptable substitute.  If I get orange blossom honey from the supermarket, would that work?

[ChristinaS1]

Ian is quite right that most supermarket honey has been adulterated. Buy it from a local beekeeper.

Ian, if you use a wine yeast with kill factors, you might not have to heat it.  Not sure if you can get Lalvin K1-v1116 (Montpellier) yeast, but it makes a nice mead; Dr Clayton Cone on the Danstar website said that this yeast used to be used as a kit yeast in some beer kits, years ago. It does require some aging to smooth out the acetaldehyde.

Cheers,

Christina.

[EWildcat7]

I am very confused by this thread.  If I want to use honey to make the Strawberry Blonde (recipe in my previous post), what should I use for honey? 

- Can I get the orange blossom honey from the supermarket? 

- If so, do I follow the boiling procedure by Ian in the first post? 

- If the best thing to do is get honey directly from a beekeeper, do I follow the instructions above?

- Is there such a thing as flavored honey to give the beer some sort of flavor?  Or does the strawberry and orange refer to the type of flower and not a fruit?

[ChristinaS1]

There are two issues being discussed: the purity of honey (or lack thereof) and pasteurization.

You  can get orange blossom honey at the supermarket but it will most likely be adulterated. There is big money in honey, which creates a high incentive to "stretch" it with sugary syrups of various kinds. Almost all honey imported from Asia has been adulterated; it is very difficult for the authorities to detect. If you buy honey from a local beekeeper, it will be 100% honey. Your palate may or may not detect a difference between pure honey and adulterated honey.

Depending on the type of flowers the bees were feeding on, honey can have different flavours. Orange blossom honey is a nice honey. 

If you use supermarket honey, it is probably pasteurized, so you do not need to heat it. Some local beekeepers pasteurize their honey and some do not; check the label or ask the beekeeper. Unpasteurized honey contains wild yeast. If you don't heat it, or use a killer wine yeast, there is a chance that the wild, natural yeast will ferment your brew instead of the ale yeast you pitched, since beer yeast do not posses kill factors. Wild yeast can produce either nice or unpleasant flavour.  One thing you can do to help your ale yeast dominate the brew is to make a starter.

Cheers,

Christina.

[EWildcat7]

25 minutes ago, ChristinaS1 said:

There are two issues being discussed: the purity of honey (or lack thereof) and pasteurization.

You  can get orange blossom honey at the supermarket but it will most likely be adulterated. There is big money in honey, which creates a high incentive to "stretch" it with sugary syrups of various kinds. Almost all honey imported from Asia has been adulterated; it is very difficult for the authorities to detect. If you buy honey from a local beekeeper, it will be 100% honey. Your palate may or may not detect a difference between pure honey and adulterated honey.

Depending on the type of flowers the bees were feeding on, honey can have different flavours. Orange blossom honey is a nice honey. 

If you use supermarket honey, it is probably pasteurized, so you do not need to heat it. Some local beekeepers pasteurize their honey and some do not; check the label or ask the beekeeper. Unpasteurized honey contains wild yeast. If you don't heat it, or use a killer wine yeast, there is a chance that the wild, natural yeast will ferment your brew instead of the ale yeast you pitched, since beer yeast do not posses kill factors. Wild yeast can produce either nice or unpleasant flavour.  One thing you can do to help your ale yeast dominate the brew is to make a starter.

Cheers,

Christina.

Thank you very much for the explanation.  I understand that if I get orange blossom honey from the supermarket, I do NOT have to follow the boiling instructions.  However, does it being adulterated mean that I should or should not use it in beer?

[Shamus O'Sean]

I have used 250 grams of a common garden variety honey (Capilano I think) in a craft sized batch.  It was a variation on the Coopers recipe Oval Office Honey Amber

It worked out fine.  There was a very slight hint of honey in the flavour.

[ChristinaS1]

6 hours ago, EWildcat7 said:

Thank you very much for the explanation.  I understand that if I get orange blossom honey from the supermarket, I do NOT have to follow the boiling instructions.  However, does it being adulterated mean that I should or should not use it in beer?

Generally that is true, but there may be exceptions. Read the label to find out if it is pasteurized. Lots of people use supermarket honey because that is all that is available to them, or is the only kind in their budget. Whether you decide to use it in beer or not is a matter of choice. 

The more honey you use, the more effect it will have on the flavour and aroma of the beer. Using 300-500gm of honey in a 23L batch will produce a hint of honey in the flavour.

If it makes up more than 30% of the ingredients, honey will dominate the flavour of the beer.  Mixing 1.5kg of honey with a Coopers kit (1.7kg), honey will make up 47% of the fermentables. It will taste strongly of honey. It will also thin the body of the brew.

I think that when the percentage of honey grows to 51%, it stops being called beer and is called braggot, which is one of the many sub-categories of mead. Meads of 8% ABV or less are called "short meads" and do not require much aging.

Cheers,

Christina.

 

 

[EWildcat7]

Thank you again Christina!  Two more questions:

- If I buy honey from the supermarket, is it guaranteed to be pasteurized and I don't have to boil it?  What are the key words that I should look for on the bottle?  i see some that saw "raw,'"unfiltered," "organic," "natural," etc.  Is there something that I would see that would tell me that the honey has or has not been pasteurized?

- do the fruit names (strawberry clover, orange blossom, etc.) in the types of honey indicate fruit flavors or are those just names of flowers?

thanks again

[ChristinaS1]

Clover honey = bees fed on clover flowers

Orange blossom honey = bees fed on orange blossoms

Strawberry clover honey = not sure but I am guessing a combo strawberry blossoms and clover flowers, which bloom at the same time.

Do orange blossoms smell like oranges? I have never had the opportunity to smell an orange blossom, but I kind of doubt they resemble each other. Flowers make fragrances that attract pollinator insects; fruits often produce compounds which repel pest type insects. 

Is honey from the supermarket guaranteed to be pasteurized? No, but the majority are. Ones that say "raw" are unpasteurized. Unfiltered honey is likely unpasteurized, but I am not sure about that. Organic means that the flowers that the bees fed on were organic; it could still be pasteurized and filtered. "Natural" honey is most likely filtered and pasteurized, and there is a good chance it is adulterate too. 

Apparently some countries don't allow the word "unpasteurized" to be on the label, and prefer the word "raw." Not sure what the regulations are in Australia. 

Christina.

[ben 10]

I still don't see the need for heating honey

[ChristinaS1]

On 11/19/2018 at 5:31 AM, Ben 10 said:

I still don't see the need for heating honey

I agree about not heating honey but, like IanH9, I am scared of a bad batch....I would choose a yeast with kill factors over heat pasteurization.

Actually  I have never made mead....I used pasteurized supermarket honey the one or two times I brew with honey. Honey is very expensive in Canada. I came *this* close to starting to keep my own bees last year, even built my own hives, but in the end I did no go ahead with it, for two reasons: I did not want to attract bears, and the expense. In Canada beekeeping is an expensive hobby. It is very common to loose 30-50% of your hives over the winter, due to cold, bears, and disease, especially Varroa mites. I believe Australia is one of the last countries in the world not to have varroa mites....Bear fencing is expensive, and not all that effective. Bears are strong and can push through most fencing. Electric fencing only works if they happen to put their nose on it. 

Just wondering Ben, do you use hot water to dilute your honey when you make mead? If so, might that serve the same purpose?

I have used apples from my orchard, home juiced and unpasteurized, to make cider and apple wine, which is also loaded with wild yeast. I have often wanted to use Lalvin 71B, a malic acid reducing wine yeast, but have never dared, as it does not possess kill factors. In other words, I have always stuck to wine (K1-v1116) or champagne (EC 1118) yeast that possess kill factors.

Cheers,

Christina.

[ben 10]

9 hours ago, ChristinaS1 said:

Just wondering Ben,

nope, no hot water at all. i did some reading and some suggested not heat.