Honey

It's been a busy few weeks so I haven't had much time to brew. I did however discover that a Boston based homebrewer's club exists (www.wort.org), which was a great experience. I learned so much from the people there, including a few out of the ordinary brewing techniques.

However, last night I finally had the chance to brew again; this time with a recipe I've had since President's Day: the White House Honey Porter. In the past I've brewed the White House Honey Ale, which is currently waiting to be bottled.

The interesting thing to me is that both of the White House Recipes contain honey (given they have their own bee farm).

Not from the White House bee farm

However, I'm honestly not too familiar with using honey in beers yet. I've always wanted to try to make mead, which is honey based. However, the only beer recipe I've used it for previously was a Honey Amber, which actually turned out quite well. But, it was surprising that it wasn't particularly sweet, nor would you necessarily realize that there was honey in the recipe from the taste.

After researching it a bit more, the Honey Amber seems to make sense. The boil time makes a big difference in what the honey adds to the beer. Honey naturally contains a lot of living organisms and bacteria, that give it a good amount of flavor and aroma.

You have to boil the honey in the wort for sanitization. However, if you boil it for 20+ minutes, you are likely to kill off many of the things living in the honey resulting in a lack of that aroma and honey flavor in your beer. However, there will be a good amount of highly fermentable sugar left for your yeast to convert to alcohol.

So it depends what exactly you are looking to do. For my two White House Honey recipes, I used variations which boiled it for about 30 mins, so I'm not expecting a huge honey flavor. However, the original White House recipes suggestion boiling for only 5 minutes. Either way, I'll find out soon enough and I'll be drinking like a president regardless! (recipes below)