Brew Day - AG#4 Honey Bunny

We thought we'd try something different and try a honey beer.

The recipe for this honey beer is taken from The Home Brew Forums.  You have to be a member to log in to their recipes area.  The recipe is called BuzzBee Bitter and was created by eskimobob. We have pretty much followed that recipe. The recipe was originally for 19 litres, so we've converted the amounts slightly to match our 23 litre brew length.

Grain & Fermentables

• Pale Malt, 3270g
• Chocolate Malt, 120g 
• Honey*, 1089g
• Gypsum, 1tsp
• Epsom Salts, 1/2tsp

* The comment regarding the honey on the original recipe is as follows:

Boil the honey separately in 1 litre of water then add straight to the fermenter on top of the cooled wort.

Hops & Copper Finings

• East Kent Goldings, 19g for last 60mins
• Fuggle, 28g for last 60mins
• Protafloc, 1 tablet last 15mins

Brew Details

• Brew Day: 14th February 2010
• Transfered to Secondary: 22nd February 2010
• Bottled: 28th February (42 Bottles)
• Yeast: Safale S-04
• Brew Length: 23 litres
• Mash Time: 90 minutes @ 65°C
• Water-to-Grain Ratio (L:Kg) : 3.2:1
• Boil Time: 90 minutes
• OG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.051 / 1.044 with honey, 1.034 without
• FG - Recipe/Achieved: 1.014 / 1.009 (in to secondary)
• ABV - Recipe/Achieved: 4.9% / 4.5% (maybe)
• EBU/EBC: 26/47
• Priming: 75g granulated sugar mixed with 250ml of wort, boiled and stirred in before bottling

We use Graham Wheeler's Beer Engine software for capturing the recipe.  Here's the custom recipe file for this brew.

Pictures

We seem to be unable to take the right photos, so there are no photos of the grain.

The 3.2:1 water:grain ratio produced a really watery mash.  We're not sure how the original recipe got to its OG:

The hops awaiting their turn - EKGs on the left:

And they didn't have to wait long.  The hops went in just after the chiller:

If you've ever wondered what 1.1kg of honey looks like, well here's your answer.  The second picture is the honey and 1 litre of water coming up to temperature:

And here's the honey mix in the bottom of the FV waiting for the wort to be transferred from the boiler:

More pictures here.

Dave & Suki.