Home Distiller

Since I'm still relatively new to this hobby, I have lots of questions.
For one, I have noticed while searching the web for recipes that some distillers recipes call for "1-cup of honey per 10 gal. batch" in all their recipes.
Why is that?

I have other questions when it comes to honey.
I have 1-gallon of honey that I set aside for a specialty wash.
I have thought about just doing a honey shine. But lately, I have really come to enjoy the rum that I have made.
And was wondering, if it's possible to make and excellent light rum using the 1-gal of honey, along with pint or a quart of molasses added to it?
Or, make 2-batches using 1/2 gal. of honey & 1/2 gal of molasses?
Or am I just being a stupid rookie, and should just stay with the honey shine?

Have you read through the tried and true recipes?

jon1163 wrote:Have you read through the tried and true recipes?

Yes I have, but didn't see/find anything about making rum with honey. I may have overlooked it??

Make your rum like normal, and fill, or shoot your thumper with the honey.

And do an HD Google Search (top of page). Leave a space after the URL and type in something like honey and molasses, or honey rum, etc. to find what others have done.
The combination sounds like it would be fuggin awesome.

Still Life wrote: The combination sounds like it would be fuggin awesome.

Depends on exactly what you are expecting honey distillate to taste like. It only slightly taste like honey. It's more a light florally taste with a slight hint of honey. It would probably get lost in the heavier rum flavors. For a honey honey taste I'd shoot the thumper as has been said.
Jb

jb-texshine wrote:

Still Life wrote: The combination sounds like it would be fuggin awesome.

Depends on exactly what you are expecting honey distillate to taste like. It only slightly taste like honey. It's more a light florally taste with a slight hint of honey. It would probably get lost in the heavier rum flavors. For a honey honey taste I'd shoot the thumper as has been said.
Jb

Now when you say "shoot the thumper" with honey, do you mean fill the thumper with raw honey, or with fermented honey wash?

Shooting the thumper means putting the honey, in this case, into the thumper, after the heads have gone through. You could put it in the thumper from the get go, but alot of the flavor might be thrown out with the heads.

In either case, my suggestion was with the raw honey (diluted down with water or wash at 2:1 or 3:1, depending on the size ratios of the thumper to boiler). The problem with honey is once you ferment it, the taste disappears (coincidentally, this is why I started playing with honey malt in the first place). So, use it as a flavoring, in the raw.

I've been playing around with honey alot lately but it's been mead, I also play ALOT with rum and will tell you that the honey WILL NOT come through on a rum with molasses as the base.

Having said that, you can take some dark brown sugar and make a light rum and also add the honey for the bulk of the sugars in the ferment. Do a strip run and use around 25% of the backset to add to your low wines for a spirit run and possibly get alot more flavor of the honey to carry over.

Shine0n

From what I have read from all the replies, is that it's basically a waste of good honey trying to use it in a rum recipe.
I'm glad I asked the question before trying it. It just sounded like a good idea.
I'll limit my rum making ingredients to the tried and true recipes, mainly blackstrap molasses.

Since I started this thread, I looked deeper into making honeyshine, and it looks like that's the way I will go with the extra honey I have.

I learned a lot from this. Thank you all very much!!

In all fairness to your research, you really need to read this thread.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=42581

Best rum alot of us have had.

Maple and Honey are kissing cousins.

Just read that thread and sounds great, we have plenty of maples around and tapping doesn't sound too bad because the wife won't let me buy that much syrup. lol

One day but not this one, lol

Honey has become my new honey and possibly a few stripping runs then add the backset to low wines would the justice.

I thought about running some mead that wouldn't clear well but it's only 3 gallons so I separated into 1 gal jugs and put in the fridge and POW clear mead in 3 days, good too!!!

Maybe you should do some mead with 12 lbs of honey you could do 5 gals of some semi dry or add some of your favorite fruit for a mellow melomel. ?.?.?.?

ShineonCrazyDiamond wrote:In all fairness to your research, you really need to read this thread.

http://homedistiller.org/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=42581

Best rum alot of us have had.

Maple and Honey are kissing cousins.

Great thread! I just got done reading it.

Unfortunately, there are no maple trees around here. Maybe I'll try his maple rum recipe, but use honey instead and see what happens.

I currently have 14 bee hives, so honey is not an issue. Thanks for sharing the thread!

Luck you!!!

Wish I had the land for that

SAS777Why not make Strawberry or raspberry mead for distilling(1.075 og or so). Two shots over ice is nice

I would with some cheaper honey but I've some good money tied up in those meads. lol

I still have 10 lbs of wild flower and will pick up another 20 by next weekend and make a how ever much wash I can make and run it and use the backset on a corn likker batch after stripping it down.

Jimy Dee mentioned to me about bee keeping, it's just not enough room, if I had 15 20 acres it would be different but just not where I'm at sadly.

Would be great to have honey at my disposal though.

jb-texshine wrote:SAS777Why not make Strawberry or raspberry mead for distilling(1.075 og or so). Two shots over ice is nice

Not a bad idea! I'll give it some thought.

If I do, I'll have to buy some canned strawberry or raspberry's, they too are hard to come by in my area.

What about fresh frozen from the grocery store? That's what I do and they are good!

Shine0n wrote:What about fresh frozen from the grocery store? That's what I do and they are good!

That's what I use also. Works great. Comes out(honey included) to 30$ish per 5 gallon ferment. Distilled that's about 15$ a qt for double distilled(80proof) one of a kind,hand made, craft liquor.
Damned if I know what to call it though...
Jbt

jb-texshine wrote:

Shine0n wrote:What about fresh frozen from the grocery store? That's what I do and they are good!

That's what I use also. Works great. Comes out(honey included) to 30$ish per 5 gallon ferment. Distilled that's about 15$ a qt for double distilled(80proof) one of a kind,hand made, craft liquor.
Damned if I know what to call it though...
Jbt

I'm a little slow. I never thought about frozen fruit That's a great idea, thank you!

Well, I made a decision.

Right or wrong, instead of just honey (mead) or adding fruit, I decided to try doing a honey wheat mash/shine.

I have some flaked and malted wheat. So I was thinking about adding ~3 lbs of flaked wheat, and ~ 1 lb of malted wheat to the 1 gallon of honey I have.
I don't necessarily need the sugars from the wheat, just the flavor.

Since jb-texshine mentioned that honey has "a light florally taste with a slight hint of honey." I was thinking that honey and wheat would go great together, and hopefully produce a nice light spirit.

Let me know if my thinking is all screwed up!

Plus, if it turns out the way I hope it will. Do I leave it clear? Or oak it with un-toasted oak chips? Or with toasted oak chips?
I know this is my decision to make. I just would like to get some input from those of you that know more than I do, which is everybody I'm sure!

I think it would be good
What yeast are you going to use?
What type of still are you putting it through?
How may runs will you do?
May I suggest if you're doing stripping runs to save some of the backset and add to the low wines for a spirit run I think it would help carry over a better honey flavor but I'm sure someone will be along to say either yea or nay.

I'll also add that I'd do an OG around 1.075-080 so it ferments dry and have no residual sugar and use a yeast that makes sure of it. ec1118 is a good one, D47 is another but is more critical on temps but will also add some fruity notes.
I say go for it but do a little research on honey so you have a good understanding of what to expect.

jb should give some good advice since he's played with honey.
Shine0n

Shine0n wrote:I think it would be good
What yeast are you going to use?
What type of still are you putting it through?
How may runs will you do?
May I suggest if you're doing stripping runs to save some of the backset and add to the low wines for a spirit run I think it would help carry over a better honey flavor but I'm sure someone will be along to say either yea or nay.

I'll also add that I'd do an OG around 1.075-080 so it ferments dry and have no residual sugar and use a yeast that makes sure of it. ec1118 is a good one, D47 is another but is more critical on temps but will also add some fruity notes.
I say go for it but do a little research on honey so you have a good understanding of what to expect.

jb should give some good advice since he's played with honey.
Shine0n

I can use all the advice I can get. Unfortunately, it may be a little late for this one. I just got done mashing it.
I didn't plan on it, but I went ahead and converted the flaked wheat, and got full conversion. When I was done, I added enough water to bring the SG down to 1.066. But after reading your reply, I may have added to much water???

After adding the water (SG 1.066), I ended up with ~7.5 gallons. I did add DAP per instructions. I tasted it when I was all done, it tasted awesome!

As for how I'm going to run it? I'm not sure. I was thinking about using a thumper filled with some of the mash, or just do a stripping run and then a spirit run in my copper pot still???

I have 2-stills, a 13 gallon stainless steel still with 3 gallon thumper, and a 2.5 gallon copper alembic still.

As for yeast, I plan on using EC-1118. The temp is still a little to high, so I'll let it sit over night before I pitch my yeast.
When I pitch my yeast, I'll hit the mash with some oxygen.

I'm not sure if anyone is interested. If so, I have posted an update below:

I made the honey wheat shine like I mentioned. I used the "Fast Fermenter" (plastic 7-8 gal. conical), it worked great! When it was done fermenting, I let it settle until it was a clear light amber color. Ran it using a thumper that I charged with some of the wash, it had a very pleasant, slightly sweet mead/honey smell. After collecting the middle of the run, I ran it through some apricot charcoal that I made from a dead apricot. After filtering it through the apricot charcoal, I proofed it down to 40% which gave me just over a gallon of finished product. I put a quart of the clear aside, and added some light charred oak chips to the balance.

The clear has a real light almost fruity taste with a hint of sweetness to it, and a dry but clean aftertaste. I'm excited to see what it will taste like after having it on oak for awhile. I'll send another update when I pull the oak off. Hopefully it will be a good update.

One of the rum threads has a guy raving about his neighbors famous secret rum recipe. I think it turned out to be molasses and honey. Don't remember the thread, but it's on one of the 2 or 3 most recent pages. Think it was in Chicago if that helps with searching.

Edit: it's in bucaneer Bob's thread. Equal parts honey, molasses, brown sugar.

As a general rule, don't research distilling recipes on the wider web, there is too much shit out there. Adding a cup o honey to any or every recipe seems silly.

So glad it turned out well for ya, I would've used the thumper as well as I do anyway on everything

Give it some time and it will be your specific sipper later down the road, dont get too hasty and drink too early as you'll end up missing the best time has to offer... good likker!

Shine0n

Married grain with honey..would be called a braggot. Don't know what you'd call that distillate either.Braggot whisky maybe..
Sounds good anyway.
Jb

I can dig it, I'm bringing some mead and rum and possibly some HBB to lake Charles La. in June for a family reunion, should make for a good time!

Maybe a HBB with some honey shine backset... hmmm Shit I hate thinking this hard

My vote goes to the hbb+hs backset.get it done soon and it'll be aged good by then.