Honey Lager

Beer Recipes
1

I am wanting to brew a honey lager. This recipe is an extract because I am hosting Learn to Brew day for my club.

The recipe I currently have is

3.3# Pilsen LME
2# Pilsen DME
0.5# Honey Malt (steeped)
2# Honey
0.5 oz. Northern Brewer Hops @ 60
0.5 oz. Northern Brewer Hops @ 0
WLP862 Cry Havoc Lager Yeast

Est. OG 1049
Est. 19 IBU

I have 3 main questions.

  1. Will Northern Brewer hops work here? I could go Cluster, Hallertauer, or something citrusy.

2.  Is 0.5# Honey malt too much? I want to accentuate the honey flavor not overwhelm.

  1. Should I try to get some Munich LME to add a little sweetness?

Thanks for your help.

2

Your recipe looks good and I think Northern brewer hops will work well for this brew. I do a Honey pils where I use Czech Saaz as my flavoring hops, I use 1 lb Chrystal malt and the same amount of honey and find the honey comes through very well.

3

This beer turned out to be a nice American Lite Lager. Not too much honey flavor but good none the less. The Northern Brewer hops fit great.

I brewed this beer for a learn to brew day held as outreach for my homebrew club.  There were lots of attendees. I missed my gravity target. I usually use a heat stick and propane burner during boil. I didn’t use the heat stick since I didn’t want to have someone trip on the cord. This seems to have caused much less evaporation due to less vigorous boil. I ended with 6G or wort instead of my target of 5.5G. The beer is great anyway.

The final recipe:
Volume: 6G
OG: 1.041
FG: 1.007
4.0 oz Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 1 3.8 %
1.6# Extra Light Dry Extract (3.0 SRM) Dry Extract 2 24.1 %
3.3# Pilsner Liquid Extract (3.5 SRM) Extract 3 49.6 %
0.25 oz Northern Brewer [9.60 %] - Boil 60.0 min 9.7 IBUs
0.25 oz Northern Brewer [9.60 %] - Boil 20.0 min 5.8 IBUs
0.50 oz Northern Brewer [9.60 %] - Boil 0.0 min 0.0 IBUs
2L+2L two step starter Cry Havoc (White Labs #WLP862)
1.5# Honey

I started fermentation at 57F then after 4 days of vigorous fermentation I raised the temp to 60F. I thought the krausen was starting to fall. In retrospect the krausen probably wasn’t falling yet since it lasted several more days.  But, I don’t taste any off flavors, so raising the temp seems to have been OK.

Very little aroma.

Tastes very clean and refreshing. Finish tastes a lot like Budweiser. No surprise since Cry Havoc is rumored to be derived from Budweiser yeast. Slightly sweet. Dry. Hard to detect honey.

The color is probably about 6 SRM which is a bit dark but that is because the recipe used extracts.

Overall, I am pretty impressed with the Lager you can get with Cry Havoc at relatively high temps with extract.