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honey and molassas
I plan on adding honey and molassas to my next batch. I was wondering if you HAVE to use a special kind of honey. I have seen honey at the home brew store, so I am pretty sure you have to use that. I have however not found any molassas. Do I use molassas bought at the super market? Also can I use honey bought at the super market?
Not sure about the molasses, but for honey I don't think it matters where you buy it. I use wildflower honey from the supermarket.. just tried to but a quality honey. I am sure some are better than others, but I imagine it is about your personal tastes. As far as I know there is no special "home brewer's honey". Honey is honey
Never used molasses. Just any mollasses should work fine. For honey, I used clover style. I have seen other kinds but they were not recommended. I don't know why.
Use honey SPARINGLY... I put as much as I would fruit in and now I have mead. Tastes horrible. I wouldn't use more than 1 pound per 5 gallons in the beginning.
I don't think honey is just honey. I saw about 3 kinds in Walmart once. While I am not a bee keeper and know all about it, if they were all exactly the same, there wouldn't be multiple kinds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey
Papazian's recipes say to use a light honey like clover, alfalfa, orange blossom, Hawaiian wildflower. I've also heard that honey that has not been cooked or processed is best. I’ve used clover and wildflower honey in beer and mead and had good results. I’ve also used a darker honey with poor results. You can get good honey at a grocery store and if the brew store has honey it should be great for brewing.
Ya, the recipe I have calls for 2/3 pounds of honey for a 5 gallon batch. I think I'll use clover. I like it on my chicken so I'll love it in my beer. The molassas in the recipe calls for 1 cup I've never even had molassas let alone buy it so we'll see what happens.
i just used store honey for my witbier, dont think it makes a diff.
I don't think honey is just honey. I saw about 3 kinds in Walmart once. While I am not a bee keeper and know all about it, if they were all exactly the same, there wouldn't be multiple kinds.
I meant that honey you buy at the home brew shop is the same honey you buy at the supermarket. There is no special honey JUST for the home brewer, as far as I know. Yes, there are multiple kinds of honey that come from bees who collect pollen from different regions and from different flowers. When I was in Italy I visited a small honey company that transported it's bees overnight to the slopes of Mt. Etna so the bees could collect honey from the flowers that only grow in the fertile soil of the volcano. Interesting stuff.
There can be some differences between honey you get from a grocery store and what you get from a homebrew shop. The grocery store honey will always be processed, and a lot of people like to avoid this. Homebrew shops often carry unprocessed honey for mead makers. I personally don't really care so much if I am just adding it in small quantities to a batch of beer. If you were brewing a mead to braggot, then you would probably want to stick to unprocessed honey.
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