I plan on using honey in a brew for the first time and have done some research on the various issues and methods.
I will be adding unpasteurized honey at high krauzen.
My question: should I gently stir it in or just pour and let nature take its course?
If you just pour it in, it’s just going to sink to the bottom and stay there without dissolving to any great extent. You’re going to want to warm it up and mix it in gently, but thoroughly.
This is one of the main reasons why I stopped adding sugar during fermentation rather than during the boil. You just can’t be sure how well it’s going to get mixed in. I’ve never noticed a flavor or performance difference even in very high gravity beers by adding sugars during fermentation.
Anything post boil should really be sanitized. If your looking for a honey flavor may I suggest possibly, waiting till you keg it and dissolving it into some boiling water (to sterilize just in case) and add it to your keg? That is of course if your kegging
No experience, but I’ve always heard that honey doesn’t require sanitizing.
I would imagine the honey itself no, but the opening of the container it comes in and every thing else it comes in contact with should be. Me personally I wouldn’t risk a good brew to add honey that is basically just going to be fermenter out anyway. Plus if your cheap like me HONEY is pricey!
I would definitely dissolve it into some water regardless.
Yeah, I’m aware there are different perspectives on this but from everything I’ve been able to gather, the risk is minimal but unpasteurized will give the most flavor benefit. This is kind of an out of the box experiment for me that I might never repeat, so I’m not going to lose any sleep one way or another. Just want to try something different.
I added it recently to an apple cider I brewed for the ol lady dissolving it in boiling water and adding it at kegging. It was a nice sweetness at the end.
I have added honey at flameout and it works well. Another option from Gordon Strong “Modern Homebrew Recipes” warm up the honey and stir it with equal volume of fermenting beer, then add it to fermenting beer.
I like that idea!
Honey that has a moisture content below 18% antibacterial due to high sugar content and for many, enzymatic production of hydrogen peroxide. Bees only cap honey when it’s mature/below this threshold, as long as your honey hadn’t been adulterated with sugar solution it should be fine. If you don’t sanitize your hops when you dry hop, I don’t know why you would worry about the honey.
THIS^^^^
Does the honey effectively mix with your wort at high krausen? We all know how honey pours even if you do warm it up in its container. That’s another reason I mixed it with water, and boiled it. I don’t know why you would risk a contamination instead of taking the few extra steps. And you also get a better way to mix it into your beer
The honey can’t hold bacteria but the container and the water and all that can. From my understanding.
Here is a short, concise answer regarding honey: Don’t.
I make mead and I never boil the honey. In my experience I believe that by boiling honey it looses some of the aromatics and flavor. I also think that regardless of mixing it in or adding it as is the yeast will ferment it completely.
My experience: I personally do not enjoy the taste of vomit in my mead (or beer), which is what happened to one of my unheated meads. So from that point on, while I don’t usually boil my honey, I do heat it to 160 F for 10 minutes.
And like others have sort of suggested, it does need to be fully dissolved, lest it sink to the bottom and just sit there and ferment slowly for who knows how many weeks or months.
Oh and uh, I’ve never won a Best of Show in beer, but I have with mead. So, take that for the zero cents it is probably worth to most people who make mead or use honey. I am constantly ridiculed for my advocacy of heating. But to me, experience is experience, results is results. I like to think I make some pretty dang fantastic stuff with honey, and others who’ve tasted it have never really complained (not to my face anyway), for whatever that’s worth (about zero cents, I know).
Is there a reason you want to add the honey at high krausen? I’m not aware of anything wrong with that. Just curious.
If I want honey to be part of the initial fermentation, I usually add it at flameout, as purduekenn mentioned. The other option he mentioned is what I usually do when adding honey after brew day. For a secondary fermentation I’ll syphon off 1-2 quarts of the fermenting beer (or you can wait until primary fermentation is completely done). Put it on the stove and heat it just a bit. Only to around 90° or so. This is just to help the honey dissolve. Gently stir in your honey. The sweetened beer can then be chilled down a bit if you’re worried about adding the higher temperature beer back to the rest of the batch. I will often move the entire batch to a carboy at this time too. I just like being able to see how well it clears up. Combine the two parts back together and you’ll see fermentation pick back up for a bit.
I’ll actually be doing this with a Heather Ale in a couple days.
Racking to secondary is a good idea. This is an actual secondary fermentation so any oxygen gets used up pretty quickly and the honey solution gets well mixed.
@pete b - Exactly! At least that’s the theory I’m going on. 
I know a guy who never gets his mead to a temperature beyond getting it to flow. His meads are highly sought out. He wrote a book about Mead. 
In beer you don’t have the ABV in your favor. There are also dextrins and such for nasties to munch on, that are not in mead. I would at least put the honey into the whirlpool at 170F for a short rest. YMMV.
I don’t warm my honey for mead more than getting it to flow either.
As to the infection possibilities, as someone who started out in meadmaking I learned the hard way that you have to be way more careful about sanitation with beer. Between the antimicrobial qualities of honey and the abv you can get pretty lax. That being said, I wouldn’t be too concerned about honey in secondary.
Fun fact: my wife self published a mead making book before The Compleat Meadmaker came out because she was teaching classes on meadmaking and there was no good reference book at the time. She as in her twenties then.Our LHBS sold it for like twenty years until the last time they ran out and my wife just didn’t want to bother printing more.