How prominent might I expect the flavors of honey to be, if used as a priming element for beer?
I am thinking about it in terms of an all-grain pale ale variation, perhaps with honey or biscuit malt for the flavoring element, instead of crystal... And let's also presume some quality honey, not the supermarket mass-produced stuff.
Topic honey priming-sugar priming homebrew
Category Mac
I've used honey in wild carbonation and aim for honey aromas, of course the beer was a clean base. I used 1g of honey like 1g of sugar and it worked perfectly.
Of course, depending on the base of the beer, it won't bring anything remarkable, but I've already gotten nice results with honey.
Based on my experience and priming experiments I've done, honey adds no flavor when used as priming. You only add a tiny bit and it ferments out leaving no flavor behind. In addition, since the fermentability is variable, you don't really know what your carbonation level will be.
If I want a slight honey flavor, I cold crash a 5 gallon batch after fermentation to separate out the yeast or pasteurize then add a cup of honey mixed with a bit of High proof alcohol to dilute and kill off any stray yeast or bacteria then stir in before kegging, I don't boil to avoid losing honey character. Not sure how to do this if bottling except for maybe using one of those new counter pressure bottle fillers since fermentation can no longer take place, but have my doubts about how well those fillers work.
Why use honey when table sugar is actually a better substitute and more readily available? Yes you can use honey, but measuring it out and adding it to each bottle or en masse to the bottling bucket will be tricky, especially ensuring the honey is evenly mixed in the bottling bucket.
Some people recommend using DME to prime, and while this may be the ideal on the theoretical level, the amount of flavor coming from the priming sugar is typically at most 3-4% of the total grist in the brew (assuming 5kg/10lb grist.)
Some also argue that the table sugar requires different metabolic pathways to break it down compared to using DME which uses the same pathways as already set up to ferment the beer. Again, this is true, but in practice the yeast have no trouble switching and fermenting out the table sugar in a few days.
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