Having forgotten to add the intended corn sugar to my IIPA on brew day, today (72 hrs after pitching yeast) I added a pound of honey into the fermenter. The OG was 1.070 and has been actively fermenting at 68. Anyone have any experience with this ingredient in an IIPA? The intention with the honey is to achieve a lower finishing gravity and overall drier beer, and maybe some interesting flavor contributions. I’m hoping this is one of those homebrewing mistakes that turns out great.
You’ll probably be good with the lower FG and dryness but honey doesn’t tend to really add a whole lot of flavor.
May I ask, what type of honey did you use? Also, let us know your results. I’ve had better flavor from unusual honey like buckwheat honey, but I’ve never added it to an IPA.
I’ve added a pound of orange blossom honey to an IPA, and I could taste it. Not enough to call it a honey beer, but I got some additional fruity & floral notes that was nice. I like it. Sort of a house character. I use it in APAs too sometimes.
I’ve done around a pound of honey in the last two IIPAs and the last Barleywine. At flameout each time. Orange blossom each time.
Similar experience to Gordon. Nobody ever says “hey, this has honey in it” and I don’t advertise it as such but, knowing what I know, I’m pretty sure it adds a little something.
just to be clear though - the honey isn’t going to lower the final gravity of what you would get if you don’t add any honey since you have already made the wort and are not replacing malt with honey. it increases the OG, but since honey will ferment all the way down, you can get to the same OG.
so if your 1.070 malt only IPA had 80% attenuation, you’d finish around 1.014. If you add a lb of honey, your OG should go up to ~1.078, but you should still finish at 1.014.
Well, technically if the honey ferments out 100%, the FG would drop to 1.012.
Are we going to have another discussion of the differences between real and apparent attenuation? The last time it gave me a headache.
Ok dude (Paul? hope that’s right, my apologies if not), you have a VERY good argument and you would be right if you had applied your comments to sugar rather than honey. Since we’re only talking about a lb in this recipe, you’re thoughts are essentially correct. BUT, it’s a little known fact that honey possesses diastatic power. So you can (ONLY WITH HONEY) actually get a lower gravity than you would have otherwise. If you’d like to discuss this more we could start a new thread. Cheers, j
interesting. learned something new Jay , although I am still puzzled how a single pound of honey can lower the FG an extra 2 points (I figured the 8 points of honey added fully fermented out, but no more, thus leaving the FG the same), but as jeffy said I don’t want to pollute this guy’s thread with the real vs. apparent attenuation talk, so I’ll leave it at that - I don’t really care since honey belongs in mead not beer ;D
It’s because the SG of ethanol is quite low (0.789) compared to the beer, so even small amounts can have a large effect on the FG.
that’s what I figured you’d say, but I assumed with only one pound, the measurable difference would be a rounding error. guess I’m the first three letters in assume then 