Using honey instead of cane sugar

[CoastalEmpireWine]

What are the benefits of using honey over sugar, I thought about making a batch of strawberry wine and this time using honey to raise my SG instead of sugar, any advise??

 

[Rocky]

I have never tried it but it sounds like you would be talking about a Strawberry Mead. Check out the Mead category and see if anyone has ever done this.

 

[AKsarben]

No real advantage. One disadvantage to honey over sugar is that honey has a low pH because of specific organic acids, and it varies. When you add regular sugar it dissovles into 2 part, Glucose and Fructose which can be utilized and really has no pH effect on wine, nor does it contribute anything to changing acid EXCEPT that the mere volume it does create causes a decrease in Acid. For example, if you were to raise the brix (%sugar) of a juice from 19 to 23 degree brix the added sugar would increase volume THAT IS NOT acidic in nature, just volume. This lowers the final acid of a chapitalization.

 

[Deezil]

Honey also has a higher viscosity, lending more to mouthfeel and such, in a wine, than cane sugar does... But it also bring to the table additional flavors - usually wildflower notes, and not everyone thinks those notes belong with every fruit or style of wine

Then theres unfermentable sugars which lend a bit of residual sweetness, as well as the "health benefits" of honey

As for actually making the wine though, the only thing affected usually is the acidity, like has been pointed out

I wouldnt call them all advantages in every situation, but theres definitely differences between honey and sugar

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

There are many different kinds of honey out there, you can find a nice light clear honey to match up well with your strawberry, we are using thistle honey for our strawberry mead this year. If you have more intense fruit like black raspberry one of the darker honeys like tulip poplar goes very nice with berries. I have only seen advantages, the honey seems to buffer the acids from the fruits, gives them more body and the honey is sweeter per pound than table sugar so you dont have to add as much. Actually now that we have bee hives we are planning on making all of our wine pretty much from honey and they are turning out very well. Crackedcork

 

[saramc]

I reviewed my wine making from last year and this year and have discovered that I am making half n half..half mead/half wine. I truly enjoy my mead, fruit meads so far with others bulk aging. I initially made a few batches of fruit wine for comparison--exact same recipe using sugar vs. honey. They all turned out just fine. The mead definitely had a better mouthfeel, though be prepared for mead compared to granulated sugar based wine to take a bit longer to come into its own. Well worth it. Different meads will age differently so they are all not created equal. You will discover with the recipes you use that you may come across a fruit mead (melomel, like my raspberry for example) that is ready for consumption as early as 7 months from the date of pitching yeast; whereas my elderberry mead is still aging and I doubt I will even open a bottle until it is 2 years old, three years preferred. When people talk nutritional benefits of the honey, just remember that if you use pasteurized honey or you "boil it" in your winemaking then you are wiping out alot of the natural goodness of that honey--not saying that there is not something there, but not the "honey is good for you" that was there before pasteurizing/boiling.
I am thinking about establishing a few hives....but I think I will locate the beekeeper in the county and "volunteer" first. Plus I am not sure if my property is conducive to hives since I live in a subdivision, though it is rural with no traffic behind my home as there is a large lake (no motor boats) behind my home, lots of trees and a nature preserve a stone's throw away. Here is to honey!!

 

[mmadmikes1]

You can keep the neighbors out of Raspberry mead for 7 months??? I swear they can hear me bottling the stuff.

 

[CoastalEmpireWine]

Thank you for all of your knowledge, I'll be using wyeast rudesheimer yeast, I'll let you know how it turns out!

 

[CoastalEmpireWine]

So you know where I can buy honey in bulk instead of going to the store and spending a fortune

 

[RoyParker]

I did a 3 gallon batch of Strawberry following Jack Keller's Frozen Strawberry recipe.

I think the use of light brown sugar over regular sugar really brings that recipe alive.

Never used honey but will use brown sugar again.

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request162.asp

 

[CoastalEmpireWine]

I have 20lbs of frozen strawberries, is brown sugar better than cane sugar?

 

[RoyParker]

I'm real new to this obsession as well.... But that batch of Strawberry turned out excellent following the recipe to the letter.

 

[CoastalEmpireWine]

The idea of replacing sugar with honey is quite intriguing and I'm very interested to see how it turns out

 

[RHGibson]

I have 20lbs of frozen strawberries, is brown sugar better than cane sugar?

Commercial brown sugar is just white sugar (cane or beet) with molasses added to it. Molasses is the boiled juice obtained from crushing the cane or beets.

 

[RHGibson]

So you know where I can buy honey in bulk instead of going to the store and spending a fortune

Try a local beekeeping club or store for contacts. Bee aware that buying honey directly from a keeper won't necessarily be less expensive than buying from a store. Store-bought commercial honey in the USA can range from as low as $2.80/lb to $3.70/lb in 60 lb containers (5 gallons; 1 qt = 3 lbs) to about $8.00 - $9.31/lb (plastic squeeze bear, 12 oz, $3 - $3.50). We pay about $6-$6.25/lb for local honey ($72-75/gallon). Why? We know the bees/hives have not been treated with antibiotics, synthetic insecticides or fungicides, and that most of the foraging (up to 5 miles from the farm) is on restored prairies and organic croplands or pastures. The honey has been strained, but not force-filtered to remove the pollen, nor has it been pasteurized. We know the beekeeper and his family, and know that we are contributing to a stronger local food web & resilient communities. Also, the honey tastes so much better than the commercially available honey!

Commercial keepers can have tens of thousands of hives that they move all around the country, depending on what is blooming where. This can be very hard on the bees, which can also be exposed to a wide variety of pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, etc., not to mention exhaust fumes as they travel the highways on trucks. Such hives are also subjected to fungicide and antibiotic treatments regularly. Commercial honey is pasteurized, which denatures enzymes in addition to killing any yeasts, bacterial or fungal spores that might be in it. It is force-filtered, which removes any pollen, which many people rely on for it's own benefits. It can also have water added to it. hmmm . . .

 

[Rice_Guy]

FYI, , , This is a 2012thread, coastal hasn’t posted for years

 

[RHGibson]

FYI, , , This is a 2012thread, coastal hasn’t posted for years

other folks might be interested

 

[Daboyleroy]

Going to give it a try

 

[Arne]

Kind of nice seeing some of the old names that do not post anymore. Arne.