Adding Honey to a Wheat Recipe

[beer4myhorses]

I would like to add 1# of honey to my wheat recipe. What kind of honey do I need? Bee honey, clover honey?

[BDawg]

Tell us more:

What kind of "Wheat Recipe"?
Yeast profile? Hops? OG? FG? Dark? Light?

Lots to answer here.


Here's a honey/wheat recipe of mine that's done pretty well and is quite a pleaser for the ladies -- my buddy nicknamed it the "Panty Melter":

http://www.brewtility.com/ViewRecipe.aspx?RecipeID=49

HTH-

[brewerTristan]

BDawg - what do you think about a regular cal ale yeast on that recipe? It looks interesting to me, but I don't have any of the required yeast around.

[mikebiewer]

I did an American Wheat from Northern Brewer that I decided to add 2 pounds of honey to.

Recipe:

6 lbs Wheat LME

1 oz Willamette (60 mins)

1 oz Cascade (15 mins)

Wyeast 1010 American Wheat Ale

I did a partial boil at about 3 gallons. I ended up adding in the Willamette hops, but then half of the Cascade for the 60 minutes. I knew I was adding a bit of sweet to this with the honey. Not sure if it did a whole lot, but it was what I had.

I added the honey in at about 15 minutes left. I used honey I got from a friend who keeps bees. I believe it was clover honey, really bright. Sorry, I'm not really sure.

Anyway, this was an experiment for me. I didn't really know what I was doing and I suppose I still don't. It turned out ok. It packs a kick and as it ages it gets better.

My advice would be to add a couple weeks onto fermentation or bottling before you drink this when you add your honey to an extract kit. Mine definitely has a sweet honey flavor to it.

If you want to read about the brew day and more specifics of what I did, plus see the honey I used you can check out my blog post about it.

Homebrewing with Honey

[BDawg]

BDawg - what do you think about a regular cal ale yeast on that recipe? It looks interesting to me, but I don't have any of the required yeast around.

Sure! Cal Ale, 002/1968 or Kolsch yeast all work great in that recipe.
Go for it-

[beer4myhorses]

So if I add one pound of honey, can I just go to the store and guy honey off the shelf or does this have to be something I purchase through a home brew supply store? If I get honey from the store, is that clover honey, or what is it made of? Will it be good for brewing. I plan to bring it to 170 to get the impurities out.

[mikebiewer]

Yea, you can take right off the shelf I believe.

And yes, bring the temp up for at least 15 minutes.

Should be good to go.

I'd recommend adjusting your hop schedule as well.

Let us know how it goes!

[Sent From My iPhone]