Of course, you can buy this foamy drink in any supermarket or even in a nearby stall. Also good beer - when it is alive, on tap, from a barrel. But even better: home-brewed, handmade honey beer. It has an authentic aftertaste with a slight bitterness, rich amber colors. For its preparation, two classic varieties of honey are best suited - flower and buckwheat. And they knew how to make honey beer in ancient times in different parts of the world. Mostly Polish and German recipes have come down to us. There were secrets of making this drink in Russia.
A little bit about cooking technology
Subject to the rules, home-made honey beer should turn out to be amber in color, have a delicate floral aroma with a touch of hops. The drink is famous for lush foam, bitterness aftertaste. In general, the taste is difficult to compare with other types of beer: so, is it worth a try?
It should be noted right away that the technology for making the drink is different from the classic malt recipe. The brewing technique differs from traditional brewing by its greater simplicity, since it does not require saccharification of malt, which is not used at all in the recipe. This eliminates the need to stick to narrow temperature conditions during the process. The dispute about whether such a drink can be considered beer without the participation of malt is set aside. You can call the final product in the old fashioned way: "mead", and honey must - "well-fed". By the way, the recipe described below was developed according to the technology proposed in the work on honeymaking, which was written by Professor Tseselsky in 1906.
Honey beer recipe. Ingredients
To prepare it, we will need the following ingredients: a liter of flower honey (or buckwheat), a bucket of water (8 liters), 10 grams of hops (with an acidity of 4.5%), 5 grams of brewer's yeast (top fermentation).
Experienced tips
It is advisable to use freshly spilled floral, buckwheat honey. A sugared product can be used only to those who are confident in their brewing skills: it requires special handling and knowledge of the intricacies that are learned from experience. And the amount of hops taken will depend on the bitterness you wish to receive. If you do not have skills in brewing, then focus on the recipe, and the bitterness will turn out a little lower than average. We take only brewer's yeast, as in the bakery, as well as in alcohol versions, mash will be obtained instead of beer. In principle, the upper fermentation yeast can be replaced with “bottom” ones, but in this case you will have to keep the temperature in a strict range from 5 to 16 degrees Celsius.
And in order not to infect the wort with extraneous microbes, all instruments with containers must first be sterilized with boiling water. It should be remembered that foreign microorganisms have a negative effect on the fermentation process. The taste of the drink itself can be regulated by the honey selected for the preparation and the amount of hop used (increasing the dosage of this component, you will make a lot of bitterness, and vice versa).
How to make honey beer at home: stage one
The process itself is not so complicated and requires perhaps patience and attentiveness. Water is poured into the container allocated for cooking (those same eight liters). It needs to be boiled, and only after injecting honey. The mixture is thoroughly mixed; as a result of manipulations a homogeneous mass should be obtained. Its upper level is marked outside on the wall of the pan, and the actual brewing begins. It will last a full hour, and the lid should be open. Do not forget to remove the foam: without these manipulations, your homemade honey beer will turn out muddy, with a strange aftertaste, and besides, it can go bad very quickly. In principle, brewing beer at this stage is somewhat similar to brewing jam.
Stage two, hoppy
In 60 minutes, your honey beer will inevitably boil away. The volume must be supplemented with water, topping it up to the initial level (for this purpose a mark is made on the pan). Together with topping up, hop is added. The beer base mixes well and the process continues for another 60 minutes. This time the foam is removed only in the first half hour.
Stage No. 3
The most important rule of how to make honey beer is to cool it quickly after brewing. Moreover, the temperature of the drink should decrease from 100 degrees to about 20. At home, the easiest way to cool is by immersing the pan in the snow, if it is winter outside, and you live in a private house. Or - in a pre-dialed bath, where additional ice is thrown in, frozen in the freezer.
Recent Efforts to Success
Then, honey beer at home is poured into a suitable fermentation tank. For example, in a large glass bottle. In this case, the liquid should be carefully filtered. As a filter, several layers of sterile gauze are usually used. Yeast is poured into the vessel, the contents of the container are mixed, and it is tightly closed and cleaned in a dark and warm room for a week. The temperature in the room all this time should not fall below 23-24 Celsius. It is also advisable to exclude the possibility of drafts.
Periodically, it is necessary to release the gases generated during fermentation. If you do not want to tinker with this (and in the early days you need to open the lid 5-6 times a day), take care to install a water lock. Experienced brewers claim that when used, homemade honey beer has a more delicate, even taste, and its aroma is noticeably more pleasant and fragrant.
When the longed-for drink gets to the desired state, it is bottled. In each of them, before the bay, you need to put honey at the rate of a teaspoon per liter of liquid. You should not drink beer right away: it still has to “ripen” in bottles. This usually takes from 10 days to two weeks. You can store the finished product indoors, unless July heat is on the street. But if the beer is provided with comfortable conditions (3-16 degrees above zero), then it is able to maintain its taste and degree conditions for up to six months.
Subtleties and nuances
In fact, practice is the best way to learn how to brew honey beer at home. Recipes are often complemented by spices: cloves, cinnamon sticks, pepper. The amount of honey is also correlated to taste. Someone loves a loved one, someone prefers bitterness. But some secrets must be kept holy. In particular, do not add boiled water at the second stage. However, if you use bottled, you can try not to drive it through the kettle. Still, the recipes are focused on ancient realities. If you are sure of the purity of the added water, boldly delete boiling from the list of manipulations.
If you started to make homemade honey beer in the winter, and you have only thickened honey at your disposal, you can put it into action by dissolving it with a steam bath. Just make sure that its temperature is not higher than +60 Celsius. Hotter conditions will kill the benefits of honey, its taste, and aroma.
For fermentation, it is better to use a dark glass container. Unfortunately, finding a 20-liter brown glass bottle is quite difficult. So home brewers wrap a transparent container with dark rags or simply paint the outer surface. By the way, when setting beer for fermentation, at least 20% of the bottle should remain free. Otherwise, the beer will peroxide or eventually break the cork, even a water seal will not save.
The benefits of honey beer
Knowing how to make honey beer is a must for anyone who likes to skip on Friday or a weekend mug or two. And do not be lazy to cook it. Firstly, you get an environmentally friendly drink, in which there are definitely no preservatives, dyes or substitutes. Secondly, you get a beer that perfectly matches your ideas of excellence - because you make it to your taste. Thirdly, homemade honey beer has a beneficial effect on the nervous system. And with an abundance of stressful situations in the modern world, such a relaxant will not seem redundant to anyone. Fourth, the divine drink normalizes and spurs the metabolic processes in the body, with which every second person on the planet has problems. Plus, sleep disturbances are eliminated (for which you need to thank the hop cones that participated in the process), and all sorts of colds are less likely to cling (this is already the area of responsibility of honey).
Of course, all this is true only when beer (including homemade and honey) is consumed sparingly, without fanaticism. Otherwise, problems with overweight may begin - “beer tummies” have already become an integral characteristic of modern man. And you can unlearn how to relax without the coveted hop drink. On the other hand, if you drink exclusively homemade honey beer, you will not succeed in becoming an alcoholic. It is unlikely that you have the ability to cook it on an industrial scale (you also need to work sometime). And the townspeople have not so many opportunities for storing finished beer. So brew beer for your pleasure and enjoy it at especially significant moments of your life. With such a drink, any rest will become brighter and sweeter, and the holidays - more memorable and enjoyable. It is only important to comply with the recipe and not to abuse alcohol.