Necessity is the mother of invention, or so I’m told. One fine spring, our homebrew club (the Stoney Creek Homebrewers) held a competition to see who could make the best honey beer—not a braggot, mind you, but a beer that used honey as an adjunct sugar. The result was a surprising array of beers that highlighted just how much value brewers can get out of just a bit of honey. This isn’t your grandpa’s honey—today’s honey has flavors that are wide ranging, perfectly complementary to malt (and even hops), and available (thanks to the growing popularity of mead) in an every-expanding universe of varieties. My entry into that competition (which, if memory serves, finished in third place) was a honey ESB, and with spring in the air and the bees waiting to get to work, it seemed like a great time to break it out.
Style
In the strictest sense of the word, honey ales don’t have a “style.” In the 2015 BJCP Style Guidelines, they would probably best fall into category 31B, “Alternative Sugar Beer,” assuming that honey is the only specialty ingredient being used. In that style, the sugar’s character should be “evident,” but the underlying beer style should still be guiding the flavor profile. So, let’s assume we’re making an English Strong Bitter, but with a nice dose of complementary honey flavor! Spoiler Alert: this beer uses buckwheat honey, so it’s darker than most strong bitters. If you enter it in competition, consider tweaking the sub-style to something like a Mild (to account for it’s brown hue), or stress very hard in your description for the judges that buckwheat is a dark honey.
Ingredients
We start with about eight pounds (3.6 kg) of Maris Otter to lay down that nice English biscuit base, but right away we need to keep in mind that honey is 100 percent fermentable, and so we’ll need to backstop the body by adding more than the usual amount of unfermentables. You can also address this in the mash, but I prefer to handle it “in house” in the grist, both to preserve my process and to get a more predictable result (and who doesn’t like the opportunity to add more English crystal malt to a recipe?). So rather than the usual pound of crystal, I double that: a half-pound (227 g) each of light and dark English crystal (approximately 15L and 90L) and an even pound (454 g) of medium English crystal (45L). That will give us plenty of great cracker-and-toffee character and add some heft.
To that grist, we add just one pound (454 g) of buckwheat honey. It’s strong, so don’t overdo it. It’s like English candi syrup: earthy and treacly and slightly spicy, which is a wonderful complement to the style. It’s noticeable, for sure, but doesn’t fight the flavors that are already present.
Hopping is simple enough: 35 IBUs of anything in a 60-minute addition, then an ounce (28 g) of Fuggles at flame-out.
And for yeast, I like Wyeast 1187 (Ringwood). Basically, I want the least-attenuating English-flavored yeast I can find, just in case the crystal malts don’t add enough body to the beer. Either the crystals or the yeast get the job done, and it leaves behind a perfect strawberry ester that makes me think of pancakes (or is that the buckwheat?).
Process
Mash at your usual temperature unless you’re paranoid about getting a beer that’s too thin, in which case, feel free to mash a degree or two warmer (though I still prefer 152°F/67°C here).
When you add the honey to the kettle, do so off of the heat and just before you come to a boil. Technically you could add it almost anywhere in the process since honey isn’t likely to be harboring contaminants, but I find that treating it like an extract is the simplest method. Boil and chill as usual.
At fermentation, you want to guard against excessive diacetyl (a famous side-effect of Ringwood yeast). Start fermentation low (62°F/17°C max), and hold there for a bit longer than usual. I usually suggest 48–72 hours, but given the yeast (and the presence of so much simple sugar), you want to hold the yeast in check for a bit longer. Four days after the first visible signs of fermentation, go ahead and raise the temperature to 68°F (20°C), and as fermentation slows, let the temperature free-rise to clean up any remaining diacetyl or precursors.
To (again) help prevent an impression of thinness, you might consider carbonating this a bit higher than your usual English pale ales (which tend to be pretty low). An even two volumes of CO2 should do the trick.
In Closing
I loved this beer, and though it did well at the club competition, it never found a home in the “anything goes” catch-all Specialty category from the 2008 BJCP Guidelines. It may find a better fit and home in the new guidelines, when it isn’t competing against every crazy idea we brewers have. You know, I’ve got some Ringwood yeast downstairs. Might be time to try this recipe out again.
Cheers, and happy spring!