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Author Topic: adding honey to secondary  (Read 4915 times)

Offline deadpoetic0077

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adding honey to secondary
« on: July 26, 2017, 02:26:49 pm »
Good afternoon!

I will be adding a bit of honey to a brown ale I recently brewed. The fermentation has just completed on this beer and I was going to bottle 4 gal of it and put 1 gal of it on the honey.

First off, how would I calculate how much I would need for this? I don't want to go crazy on how much more alcohol would be added this way, im just looking to get some more honey flavor in the beer. Is there any kind of calculation I could use to do this?

Secondly, I don't want to stir the honey into the beer too much because of the risk of oxidation... or would that not be a problem since fermentation would be started up again?

Thanks for any tips!


Offline Nathan

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #1 on: July 26, 2017, 02:34:47 pm »
I often add a pound or two to the secondary to add flavour and thin out heavy beers also to enhance and preserve fruit flavours I usually add it right after first kruasen a bit sooner than you plan too I never stir mine just dilute it with an equal part of boiling water and table spoon of lemon juice to lower the ph and make it more fermentable


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Offline Nathan

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #2 on: July 26, 2017, 02:36:14 pm »
I use a sanitized food grade funnel to add the honey


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Offline Nathan

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #3 on: July 26, 2017, 02:37:56 pm »
I let the honey cool to near fermentor temp before I add


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Offline Nathan

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #4 on: July 26, 2017, 02:40:55 pm »
Word of caution I've had very bad luck using honey as a priming agent
Slow and uneven conditioning


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Offline Joe Sr.

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #5 on: July 28, 2017, 08:41:30 am »
I often add a pound or two to the secondary to add flavour and thin out heavy beers also to enhance and preserve fruit flavours I usually add it right after first kruasen a bit sooner than you plan too I never stir mine just dilute it with an equal part of boiling water and table spoon of lemon juice to lower the ph and make it more fermentable


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Not sure why you are worried about the fermentability of honey.  IME, it's plenty fermentable as is.

I've never added it to the secondary, however.
It's all in the reflexes. - Jack Burton

Offline Nathan

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #6 on: August 23, 2017, 08:14:13 pm »
Carry over from mead making I guess Honey in its natural state is not readily fermentable it needs to be diluted and ph adjusted and when making strong meads given a lot of yeast nutrients as well When adding a small amount of honey to beer that is naturally full of enzymes and slightly acidic It's never hard to get it to ferment


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Offline Nathan

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Re: adding honey to secondary
« Reply #7 on: August 23, 2017, 08:16:33 pm »
I have had problems using honey instead of priming sugar to bottle condition beer very slow and uneven results with no perceptible taste difference


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