Things To Do With Honey, Part I. By Pete Ricks.

Things To Do With Honey. Written By Pete Ricks Or should we say, things to Brew with Honey? Brewing with honey is an age old traditon. Some of the earliest beverages fermented used honey as a base malt, not that it was called a base malt back then. Today, we have different varieties of honey from all over the world to choose from and they all have their special characteristics. This article is the first part in a series of my brewing experience with a 5 gallon bucket of Arizona Desert Honey. Actually, it was more like a 4 1/2 gallon bucket of Honey, but more about that later. There are so many different things to brew with honey. Some of the recipes that I used were fairly conventional, like the HardAss Apple Cyser that will be covered in a future series. Then there was the experimental German Honey Pilsner, which is still fermenting as I write this, and rather odoriferously too, I might add. More about that later too. Some of the other brews that I brewed were a Cherry Mead, a regular Mead, and the beer that I will be covering here in the first part of this series, the Desert Imperial Porter. The reason I am writing about the Desert Imperial Porter first is because it is the first brew that has been produced from the honey that is drinkable, even though it is still young for a high gravity beer. The other brews are still either fermenting or aging. The recipe for the Desert Imperial Poter was inspired by the fact that I had been wanting to do an Imperial Porter for some time, but I also had all of this honey that I wanted to brew with. I wanted to make sure that my Imperial beer was "Imperial" enough, so adding some honey to the recipes seemed like an interesting way to make sure I got the gravity I was looking for, and I did. In formulating my recipe for the Desert Imperial Porter, I chose a base malt of good old American 2-Row. 15 pounds of it to be axact. I also wanted to add some different sweetness flavors to compliment the honey so I added in a pound of 120 lovibond Crystal Malt as well as a pound of Carapils. This beer would have been pretty sweet even without the honey! So much for sweetness though, now we needed some dark malts to give the beer a Porter character. For that, I added a pound of Chocolate Malt, and a 1/4 pound each of Roasted Barley and Black Patent Malt. For the hops, I wanted this beer to have a nice floral, American Hop profile with enough bitterness to offset what was sure to be a sweet beer, but not enough to overpower the delicate honey flavors and aromas. I chose to bitter with an ounce and a half of 15.1% AAU Magnum Pellets. For the flavor and aroma hop additions, I chose Kent Goldings and Cascade as this has worked well in previous Imperial Stouts that I have brewed. The item that was really going to make this beer unique was the 3 lbs(1 Quart) of Desert Honey that I planned to add at the end of the boil. Of course, I dripped it all over the place but most of it made it into the pot where it "pasteurized" for about 5-10 minutes before I cooled the wort down for pitching. Deciding upon the yeast was a difficult choice as I had a hard time deciding whether to use the traditional Irish Ale yeast for the style or go with something more neutral. I decided to go with the White Labs California Ale yeast as I wanted the honey flavors to stand out, and the hop character too. This yeast will also give you a little more attenuation and I wanted to ferment this beer as dry as possible. Any time you make a high gravity beer, you should make a starter, and mine was a little different for this beer. As you can see from the picture, I used a little honey in my starter along with some dry malt extract. This starter took off well and I had fermentation activity within hours of pitching. As with some of the high gravity beers, I also had to use a blowoff tube with this beer as this beer did rise up and blow out of the carboy some time after I had retired from a long day of brewing. After 10 days in the primary vessel, I racked it over into a secondary with a 1/2 ounce of Kent Goldings and another 1/2 ounce of Cascade. These aged for about another 7-10 days which is when the beer was racked into a corny keg for additional aging, as well as sampling. That be today! So there you have it, Desert Imperial Porter. You can check out the recipe for Desert Imperial Porter in our recipe database. Brewing with Honey can be an interesting experience. Stay tuned for our next part of the series, The Tale Of Two Meads. Until then, enjoy your beer, and Mead!