I have made a few honey beers in the past, one on purpose and the rest because I had a poor crush on the grains (not familiar with the LHBS grain mill). I know a low alcohol beer is not necessarily a bad beer and I rarely drink to get drunk but still, I like my ales to be at least 4.5% ABV or higher. No other reason than that's what I'm used to drinking.
I wanted to find out the different effects of honey during the boil phase and at the time of high krausen (peak fermentation). Online literature states that honey placed in the fermentor during high krausen will yield a sweeter, more honeyfied flavour whereas the beer with the honey placed in the boil will result in a dryer, and a possibly thinner brew with a higher alcohol level. But, of course, I want to find out for myself and also see what people actually prefer so I made two beers very similar to each other. Here are the recipes:
Honey Nut Brown 1
3.86
KG Pale 2 Row
.340
KGCrystal 120L
.40
KGBrown Malt
.06
KGChocolate Malt
.03
KGRoasted Malt
mash @ 156f
31 grams Cascade Hops @60 Minutes
29 grams Cascade Hops @30 Minutes
28 grams Fuggles Hops @5 Minutes
1 cup honey one day after primary (High Krausen)
2 Cinnamon sticks(Low Krausen)
Honey Nut Brown 2
3.86
KG Pale 2 Row
.340
KGCrystal 120L
.40
KGBiscuit Malt
.06
KGChocolate Malt
.03
KGRoasted Malt
mash @ 153f
31 grams Cascade Hops @60 Minutes
29 grams Cascade Hops @30 Minutes
28 grams Fuggles Hops @5 Minutes
1 cup honey at the end of boil
2 Cinnamon sticks(Low Krausen)
So, the differences between the two would be the honey placement time, slight mash temp difference and the substitution of Biscuit Malt for Brown Malt.
The OG for both beers was: 1.049
The FG of Honey 1: 1.013 = 4.8%ABV
The FG of Honey 2: 1.010 = 5.2%ABV
That would make Honey 1 a little sweeter than Honey 2, but I will not know the taste differences because it is still conditioning in the bottle. I usually wait about 2 weeks to taste the beer. Check back in a couple days and I should have the results.
UPDATE:
Well, the experiment, I believe, has turned out to be a little bit of a failure. Not that the beers were bad, they were both quite tasty; it was a variable that I didn't think was too big of a deal at the time: a hop sock. For the Sweet Brown, I used a hop sock and didn't use it for the Dry Brown. Apparently, you don't get as much hop flavour when you use the sock because there is little agitation when it is all balled up. Anyway, the Sweet Brown did not have much of a hop kick, and I could really taste the Brown Malt (which is a nice malt). It was a nice, smooth beer. The Dry Brown had a strong Cascade hop flavour. I believe that I read somewhere that drier beer brings out the hoppiness and this was quite the case. For 2 beers with almost exact same ingredients, it was amazing how different they tasted. This may have just been the case of the honey doing its job differently. The only way to know for sure is to redo the Sweet Brown again without the hop sock.
And, if you want a cinnamon flavour, 2 sticks did not do a damn thing. In the future, I would add at least 4 sticks to give it some sort of cinnamon kick.
