My first honey shine!

[Bigbob]

Made up a wash of honey using thatguy1313s recipe in shared. Hope it works, the starting SG was low (1.03). We'll see what happens...

[MichiganCornhusker]

Please post your results, I've been thinking of a honey shine since reading thatguy's post as well.
There is also a recent mead post that sounded like it worked out well. http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=54043
I've got a gallon of honey from last fall that I bought to make a raspberry mead, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. Maybe it is meant to be a spirit...

[rager]

may or may not be much of a contribution to this thread. but Ive been making honey shine out of corn/malted wheat/ and honey malt. fantastic drop on my end . been thinking about doing a bunch of stripping runs and shooting the thumper with a honey concoction on the spirit run.

[Bigbob]

Will for sure, did a little different on recipe, used 80oz honey (5lbs) Costco . Also did not have DAP so used tomatoe paste. And 12 Tbls of yeast sounded excessive so I used 6. So far it hasn't started bubbling.

[thatguy1313]

Posted that recipe very early in my distilling days. Done it a little differently now. Biggest difference is converting the sugars in the honey. I throw the honey and a couple gallons water in a BOP and bring it to a boil. Back off heat and simmer for 20 minutes then let it cool. Some solids settle out, almost like clarifying molasses. And I just make pugi' s yeast bomb instead of all the other nutrients. Good luck to you!

[Bigbob]

Well ok.... We'll just tuff it out I guess.

[NcGunny]

I have had good success with a combo I call my raisin bomb. I slice up or dice a little under a cup of raisins and and put them in a pan with enough water to just cover them. Get them to boiling and stir in around 7 or 8 spoons of yeast. Boil till water is almost gone. Cool and dump into your fermenter. Sometimes I will add a little T paste if I remember it. When makung rum..it will makr a cap that reminds you of a bad horror movie scene. Thick and bubbley and the t paste gives it a funny color.Been itching to make more honey shine but the cost of honey here is prohibitive.

[Bigbob]

So just updating, the wash did not start up right away,then took off like gangbusters. For one day, then slowly bubbled for one more day. I pushed down on the lid of my fermentor for another day. Checked SG today it was 1.00. Going to let sit for awhile to see if it goes any lower, then will run a strip then spirit run. Will let everyone what happens.

[HDNB]

keep the backset. its awesome to sour UJ

[Bigbob]

Yeah I saw that in your post. Will try for sure thanks.

[Bigbob]

So today's the day to run my wash. Just started running took off 200mls of fores, just for kicks took a reading and it's only 40%. So this will definitely be a stripping run.

[Bigbob]

So I ended up collecting a qt from the first strip. Did not check the proof but it's pretty low. So I added that to my next run of wash(remember I have a 21/2 gal still). I have enough wash left that I should be able to do a third and final run. Will keep you posted.

[Bigbob]

Just took a reading off the fores of this run: 50%. A little better, like I said I hope to collect a little more from this run and then combined with the last bit of wash to run a third time.

[Bigbob]

Got 2qts of 50proof(25%) poured that back into still and had enough of wash to fill for third run. This is going to be final!

[Bigbob]

Just finished the third run. Got 2qts 70proof(35%), letting it air 1qt white,1 qt oaked. Will see how it taste in a while!

[HDNB]

my magic 8 ball said that it's going to disappear quick!

[Bigbob]

Hoping that it's good enough to bring to S3.

[W Pappy]

Sounds tasty Bb how she smell?

[Bigbob]

Damn it! I got greedy and tried to get more product,what I got was heads . The oaked is not quite as bad, but the white is pretty headsy. I'm thinking of pouring that qt into my sweet feed I'm running this weekend.

[W Pappy]

Looks like we will be runnin the same this weekend lol sept for the honey of course.
Well that's sucks Bob! start over and give er another try.

[bellybuster]

there's another discussion regarding distilled mead where we both aged our mead prior to distilling. Me thinks that might be key. Fresh mead tastes like shite. If I were to describe fresh mead to a distiller I would start with the word heads.
This has me wondering if a simple sugar wash could benefit from long term secondary????

[Bigbob]

I ran some sweet feed today but when I checked the honey shine it didn't smell so headsy so I'm letting it age some more.this is one of the many things I'm learning in this hobby.....PATIENCE!!!!!

[bellybuster]

haha, probably the hardest part. I have several different spirits aging in a few different ways and my biggest dilemma is which one to taste this time.

For interest, my honey shine has been on oak since I distilled it, I think 4 weeks now, it is spectacular but the quantity is dwindling fast.

[SassyFrass]

I would love to do honey likker, but I haven't found a decent priced local bee keeper. Something killed a bunch of the local bees a couple years ago and folks are trying to get their hives back on track.
I guess I could by Sam's or Costco, but I'd prefer to use local. We'll see this spring/summer.
Good Luck BB, hope it airs out and becomes less headsy for ya.

[Bigbob]

Just bringing this post back to report in. Took a 3/4 full bottle up to a camp I was working at. Tried it with some sweet tea and it was delicious! This is one that requires some time to develop taste. Bringing a bottle to S3 for comments and/or criticism. Will try this again.

[JellybeanCorncob]

Hey Big Bob:
I don't know if is the same Honey shine you gave me earlier this week. Just wanted to say it's very good.
I tried it full strength and the honey wasn't coming threw. I dropped an ice cube in and there it was, a honey finish. Quite tasty. I think I'll have another.
BTW no heads bite that I can tell. Time does wonders for spirits.
Cheers BB

J. C.

[thatguy1313]

I've done a couple more experiments with this. Seems like its best just to throw the honey in the water and add fresh yeast. The key is to let that sit for about six months before distilling. And it does get way better with age!

[Bigbob]

JC, this was not the same run . This was a new run that I did that was slightly different. I doubled the honey, used more nutrients, made a yeast bomb and did the same 1.5 runs. Was hoping to get more flavor quicker and as I said, let it sit for awhile....it will get better!

[thatguy1313]

Wow! Doubled the honey? I normally get around 1.06 sg from 1 gallon honey to 5 gallons water. Wonder if the honey here has a higher sugar content. I buy it from a homebrew shop. Wonder if that's different from what you can get at the grocery store.

[SquirrellyNutz]

For anyone looking for bulk honey here is a link.

https://www.dutchgoldhoney.com/bulk-honey" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

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