I am considering priming my Bourbon Barrel Porter with honey. Survey says…4.67 ounces of honey/5gallons for 2.4volumes. I’ve read to boil the honey in 8-16 oz. of water and rack your beer on top. Does this sounds good to you experts?
Honey is anti microbial. I’d just mix it in when you rack to your bottle bucket or mix with a bit of warm preboild water first. Warming slightly will make it easier to mix.
I think that will work. But I don’t think 4.67 ounces of honey will bring any noticeable flavor to a porter.
Your probably right. I am really just looking for the carbonation over flavor. But you have my wheels spinning. I could add more to get a flavor component.
If you haven’t brewed it yet you might consider honey malt.
I’ve been using honey to prime bottles from left over beer from the primary after kegging. A couple grams in a 12 ounce bottle or 3-5g in 16-22oz bottles works awesomely. Like Steve said, honey is anti-microbial awesomeness.
i used some honey to bottle a double IPA once and it was fantastic. It works great as a priming sugar if you want that honey flavor in your beer (porter) some honey malt will help but actually adding some honey at flame out will get you a nice honey aroma and flavor maybe 1 lb per 5 gallons. it will also boost your gravity too.
i’ve used organic raw honey not boiled w/o any problems. Just heat up the water enough to easily dissolve the honey. cool the mixture down to 70 and mix it into your bottling bucket.
I know Logsdon uses pear concentrate to prime all of their farmhouse beers. I’ve got two batches coming due for bottling. They will be corked in 750s. Im going to give it a whirl. First I have to source the concentrate then do some math. If I can find peach and cherry concentrate I might try that because my farmhouse beers are one cherry and one peach. Should be a fun experiment
I use honey to prime a honey ale I brew. The beer usually has a nice honey flavor but that could be because of the 3# of honey in the batch also.
what was the highest temp the beer achieved after primary fermentation was complete? 4.67 ounces will only work to get 2.4 volumes if the highest temp your beer every saw was 60*f.
check out http://www.northernbrewer.com/priming-sugar-calculator/
Lately I’ve been using old bottles of honey that have about little bit of honey in them, and throwing in some oak (or whatever wood I would like to use in a brew), add a nice amount of whiskey or bourbon to it, and let it age until I have something ready. Then I throw that mixture into my keg and let it carbonate naturally while adding a nice oaky touch. Don’t get any honey flavor from it, but it’s easy, and I now have a use for that last little bit of honey in the jar that is such a pain to get out anyways.