Honey Blonde Ale Recipe
It seems there are hundreds of beers available now that claim to be honey beers but sometimes it’s difficult to tell just how much honey is in them. It’s difficult to detect much honey aroma at all in some beers and this may be to do with the process of brewing them. What I want to do though is try my hand at a brew with a large percentage of honey to see how much of that flavour I can keep in the finished beer.
Table of Contents
How to Treat Honey In Beer
In many respects using honey in a beer should be the same as just about any other sugar because that’s basically what it is. Like most sugars honey will ferment out completely and make the beer drier than if you hadn’t used it. What you want though is that delicate flavour of the honey to remain and this is probably the hardest part I think.
When using sugar in a beer many brewers add it at the end of the boil. With most granulated sugars this is convenient so all the sugar is dissolved and ready to be fermented when the wort is cooled and the yeast pitched.
The temptation is to do the exact same thing with honey but this causes problems in terms of flavour. A lot of the delicate flavour compounds in honey would likely to be driven off at the high temperature at the end of the boil so you end up losing the aroma of the honey, which is exactly what you want to gain by using honey in the first place.
Keeping that Honey Flavour
To ensure I retain as much of the honey flavour as possible I’m brewing a beer that doesn’t have any overpowering qualities. If I brew a hop monster then the hops are going to blow everything else out of the water. I want the honey to be the star of the show so I am brewing a Blonde ale that, from previous brews already has a honeyed quality to it that will only emphasise my goal.
The next step is to make sure that the honey goes in at a point when you’re going to have the least amount of fermentation activity driving off the flavour. In this case it’s going to be at the point when primary fermentation is slowing down, just around the time you would be adding dry hops if the recipe calls for them.
Adding Honey During Fermentation
By adding it this late in the process there will be no heat to drive off flavour and less activity in the fermenter with lots of carbon dioxide bubbling away the flavour.
There are of course slight concerns with regards to introducing wild yeast or other bacteria but on all my brews so far I have never had an issue. Talking to a few people who make meads it would seem they don’t worry about this either and disregard pasteurisation in many instances.
So because of this and the amount of honey which is roughly 20% of the fermentables I hope to achieve a beer that is full of honey flavour.
The Recipe
Batch Size: 19 Litres
Original Gravity: 1.058
Final Gravity: 1.014
ABV: 5.8%
Bitterness (IBU): 38
Est. Colour (EBU): 12
Ingredients
| Amount | Item | Type | % or IBU |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2.55 kg | Lager Malt (3.9 EBC) | Grain | 56.94% |
| 530g | Vienna Malt (6.9 EBC) | Grain | 11.76% |
| 230g | Crystal Malt – 40L (78.8 EBC) | Grain | 5.06% |
| 230g | Wheat Malt (3.9 EBC) | Grain | 5.06% |
| 26g | Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [4.00 %] (60 min) | Hops | 13.6 IBU |
| 34g | Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [4.00 %] (20 min) | Hops | 11.0 IBU |
| 40g | Saaz [4.00 %] (20 min) | Hops | 13.1 IBU |
| 15g | Saaz [4.00 %] (0 min) | Hops | – |
| 15g | Hallertauer Mittelfrueh [4.00 %] (0 min) | Hops | – |
| 950g | Honey (2.0 EBC) | Sugar | 21.18% |
| 1 Pkgs | Dusseldorf Alt Yeast (White Labs #WLP036) | Yeast-Ale |
Tasting notes will follow shortly.
And how was it?
Just bottled this one up, will post up the tasting notes soon.
I agree with you about adding the honey towards. I’ve added honey in the boil and a lot of the nose and taste isn’t identifiable. And as you say I think chances of bacterial infection are very very slight adding it when you do
Thanks for the comment Ralph, the honey definitely came through in this beer and I had no problems with the stability. Honey is such a delicate flavour anyway so this is definitely the way to go.
Hi Neil, exactly at what stage of the fermentation did you add the honey? Did you ferment it for twenty days?
Hi Mike, I added the honey once primary fermentation started to finish, so around 4 – 5 days then fermented out fully as normal.
Did you add the honey directly from bottle to fermenting bucket or did you boil first? I’m concerned with contamination but your method sounds like the honey taste and even smell would definitely come across.
The honey was ended to the fermenting bucket around 5 days after fermentation started. There is a small chance of contamination but the low pH and alcohol content combat this risk. It is up to you if you think it is worth the risk.
Hi, When you added the honey to the fermenter, did you stir at all, or just open it, dump the honey, and close it?
I just made a brew that had a OG of 1.042. I added honey when gravity got down to 1.016 – so it was past the most vigorous stage of primary, but definitely not at the end. About 2.5 days into primary. Wondering if that was maybe too soon?
I would have stirred it in gently. I would think 2.5 days is slightly early but you aren’t going to lose as many aromatics. Hope it turns out well.
At what point did you take your OG and FG readings?
Wouldn’t the addition of the honey change your gravity readings so how did you take that into consideration?
Would love to see a step by step video of this recipe have you done one or seen one prior to this?