honey

[Pacus]

I can buy raw honey for $2 a lb. It's clover honey. I have found that going no more than half sugar, half honey works well. you still get the floral smell from the spirit and stays smooth. I just do honey, sugar, water and a bit of tomato paste and yeast. It takes a while to fermit (like up to 3 weeks depending on room temp). When I run a batch off my buddies come over and drink it all up. Last summer I bought 50 lbs of honey and mixed that, 30 lbs of sugar in just under 50 gallons of water. I probably had a final sg of 10% or so but can't really remember. I ended up with about 6 gallons of good honey shine at 80 proof. It was hot so I had it in my garage and it was ready to run in 12 days. It took a long time to run all of it at 7 gallons at a time on my old setup. My buddies seem to visit more when I have a cabinet full of honey shine. At least they go in on the honey with me lol

[HappyHeiferBrewing]

I use clover honey for my light lager recipe. It's a pound in at the end of the boil/flameout per every 5 gallons of wort I have. Leaves my beer light due to the sugar during fermentation and a tinge of sweetness in the drink and by no means is it dry. Has a great mouthfeel. I managed my grain bill to keep the ABV around 5.5%.

Realistically you could do the same here with a spirits runs minus the hops. I wouldn't suggest using only honey as the expense isn't really worth it. But throwing in some 2 or 6-row malt with it would make it tasty. I'd be willing to run a second batch on my next lager run without adding hops and see how it turns out.

[engunear]

There is a German honey schnapps that I tasted in some bar that has had me curious about making a dry, intense honey-flavored spirit (no cheating by adding honey at the end).

I've done 3 or 4 honey ferments, always with di-ammonium phosphate and high gravity yeasts and have not had one stop short. The books on mead always recommend adding nutrients. At 25C they ferment through in 36 hours or so. They have all been distilled with some having virtually no honey flavor and one having a manure character. Bleah! If at first you don't succeed ...

In the last one I took an idea from the whiskey world and added a tsp of yoghurt to the ferment (1.5kg honey) with the yeast. This produced a lovely honey spirit. Time to scale up a bit. So I'm suspecting there may be wild bacteria in some honey, and one needs to bring in ones own to dominate the wild stuff. Also the high acid levels you get with lacto must help in creating esters i.e. flavor.

[NZChris]

They have all been distilled with some having virtually no honey flavor and one having a manure character.

Please describe the still and method. I want to have a small scale try at this with some spare honey.

Thanks
Chris

[engunear]

Hi Chris

Just a simple pot still. Nothing fancy at all. First run collect everything to 30% ABV in receiver. Second run will be simple pot still, discard first tbsp, distill till about 65% ABV aggregated, but really on on the basis of taste. I'm planning to age with about 1-2 cubic cm of solid american oak per 750ml. Oak toasted to 20 seconds of yellow flame.

For ferment, add di-ammonium phosphate according to standard mead recipes. 1tsp per gal if I recall. Yohgurt needs to be living, i.e. "traditional", not that sugared fruity muck. Ferment at 25-30C with whiskey yeast. Strip within 24 hours of ferment ending.

I actually haven't done the second run yet, as I like the first batch so much I bought more honey to bulk it up (i.e. a second ferment is planned.) But this is all going down a path well tried with grain so I'm optimistic. The flavors get stronger during aging as the acids in the timber react with the alcohols to produce esters, same as whiskey. So I'm hoping in a years time it will be "spiffin", as they seem to be saying.

[NZChris]

Thanks engunear. That's very close to what I was thinking of doing. I'll hold off for a bit and see how you go on the spirit run. I have enough honey here to make a really big cockup if I get it wrong, so I'm happy to jump over it a couple of times a day to get my exercise until I decide what I'm going to do with it.

A truck loaded with hives stopped outside today. I was sure he was going to offload some more honey. It was a bit of a relief when he drove off.