Brewing a honey ale at home with Indian honey
India produces some wonderful single flower honeys, from litchi to eucalyptus to wild forest honey. Brewing with them is easy. Keeping their character in the finished beer takes a bit more thought.
What honey does in beer
Honey is mostly simple sugars, glucose and fructose, with about 17 to 18% water. Yeast ferments almost all of that sugar. That is the first surprise for many homebrewers: honey makes beer drier and a little stronger, not sweeter. The sweetness you taste in a jar disappears. Only the aroma and a hint of floral flavour remain.
As a rough guide, 1 kg of honey adds about 14 to 15 gravity points to 20 litres of wort, a little less than the same weight of table sugar because of its water content. Our guide to brewing sugars compares honey with jaggery, cane sugar and others.
Choosing an Indian honey
The honey matters more than the recipe. Delicate, mild honeys mostly vanish in beer. Stronger, distinctive honeys survive.
- Litchi honey from Bihar is floral and fruity, a good match for a pale ale or blonde.
- Eucalyptus honey is darker and slightly medicinal, which can be interesting in an amber or brown ale in small amounts.
- Wild or forest honey varies by region and season. It is often darker and more complex.
- Mustard honey crystallises quickly and is mild.
Buy raw, single source honey from a trusted seller. Taste it first. Adulteration with sugar syrups is a known problem in the honey trade. A syrup cut honey will add sugar but no character. If it tastes flat and only sweet, it will do the same in your beer.
A honey ale recipe
For 20 litres at an original gravity of about 1.050, with honey at roughly 12% of the fermentables:
- Pale ale malt: 3.6 kg (80%)
- Light crystal or honey type malt: 0.35 kg (8%)
- Indian honey: 0.55 kg (12%), added after primary fermentation slows
- Hops: a gentle bittering addition to about 20 IBU, with a small late addition of a floral hop such as East Kent Goldings
- Yeast: a clean ale yeast, or an English strain if you want more fruit
Mash at 66 to 67 °C to keep some body, because the honey will thin the beer. Keep the hops modest. Big bitterness and citrus hops hide the honey.
When to add the honey
This is the decision that matters most. Honey added at the start of the boil loses most of its aroma to heat and to the vigorous CO2 of early fermentation. You get sugar and not much else.
Better options are, in order of how much aroma they keep:
- At flameout: stir it into the hot wort after the heat is off. Some aroma survives and the wort is sanitised.
- In the fermenter after the main fermentation slows: around day four to six. Warm the honey gently in a water bath until it pours, dilute it with a little boiled and cooled water. Then add it. Fermentation restarts briefly, but far less aroma is driven off.
Honey has very low water activity and rarely carries an infection, so most homebrewers add it without boiling. If you are worried, heat the diluted honey to around 70 °C for a few minutes, not a full boil.
Fermentation and bottling
Ferment at 18 to 20 °C. Warm fermentation adds fruity esters that compete with delicate honey aromas. After adding honey to the fermenter, wait until the gravity is stable for two or three days before bottling. Bottling a honey beer early is a fast route to over carbonated bottles, because the honey sugars finish fermenting in the bottle.
Fixing a beer where the honey disappeared
If the finished beer tastes of nothing in particular, the honey was too mild, went in too early or was buried under hops. Try a stronger honey next time, add it later and lower the bitterness. Keep a small jar of the same honey aside so you can smell it next to the beer and judge what survived. A small amount of honey type malt can also help, since it gives a honeyed sweetness that does not ferment away.
Balancing adjuncts like honey, jaggery and fruit with malt and hops is a recipe design skill. It comes from understanding what each ingredient adds and takes away.
Common questions
Does honey make beer sweet?
No. Yeast ferments nearly all of the sugar in honey, so the beer ends up drier. Only some of the aroma and flavour remains.
Do I need to boil honey before adding it?
Usually not. Honey rarely carries infection because of its low water content. If you are cautious, dilute it and heat it to about 70 °C for a few minutes.
Can I use crystallised honey?
Yes. Warm the jar gently in hot water until it is liquid again, then dilute it before adding it.
Which Indian honey is best for beer?
Distinctive honeys such as litchi or wild forest honey keep more character in beer than mild, blended table honey. Taste it first.
