Finished bottling and saw the honey

It's hard to tell what went into the bottles and what did not go into the bottles. I'd give them a few weeks and see if they carb up. Ultimately, be ready to rip 50 caps off, add 1/8tsp of table sugar, and recap. Welcome to the suck. I think most of us have had uncarbed beers before.

 

Did you just pour the honey in the bottling bucket? If so, I doubt it had a chance to fully dissolve and make its way into the bottles.

 

If all of the honey was still in the pot, then no, the beer will not carbonate. If the bottles are nor carbonated after a couple of weeks, think about re-priming, but not with dabs of honey. Measure out appropriate amounts of table sugar.

 

And there folks.. is the reason you don't carbonate with honey.

Next time, boil some water, remove, add the honey, stir it in.. and add that solution to your bucket if you feel the need to use honey as your expensive primer.

 

It's going to be a rough guessing game. I typically have great results with a funnel, 1/8tsp and I add a measure of sugar through the funnel into each bottle. Some of the sugar sticks to the wet sanitized funnel, but that makes each bottle exciting.

Don't reuse your caps.

 

Best to dissolve your priming agent before adding to beer in the bottling bucket. Stir gently a few times to distribute. Cover the bucket and wait 15 minutes out of paranoia. Then bottle. Should even work with honey, although I think knowing how much honey to use and then weighing it out is problematic. Difficult to work with something so viscous and sticky.

 

Never used honey for bottling, but based on this thread I will continue not to use it. Figuring out what sugar to use in bottling is the last thing I think about. I usually just grab whatever is in my pantry which 99% of the time is regular cane sugar. I've always thought by the time bottling comes around and the beer needs more flavor I need to go back and look at my recipe.

 

As others have said you will most likely have to add sugar and re cap; not fun.

For anyone really wanting to utilize honey for carbonation; which is a great way to add a slight and delicate sweetness to the finished beer; just do it in a keg instead of carbing with Co2 and then bottle with a beer gun or counter pressure filler.

I do this for competition beers as it can separate my beers from the rest of the crowd and usually earns me a few extra points for standing out to judges who are tasting similar beers over and over.

Really hard to utilize honey when bottling from a bucket direct into bottles.

Edited to add: The times I've had to uncap add sugar and recap I boiled the sugar in water and used a droplet to measure out ML of the solution and it works great, that way you get consistency- no gushers or flat beers.

 

Doubt it.

I never shake them and I get good results. I just let them do their thing. At this point there's no trub on the bottom of the bottles to get in the way of yeast eating up all the good stuff. If you do have to reprime, you may also want to get the bottles somewhere that's close to 70F. Yeast can struggle to prime as they age.

People generally dilute their priming sugar down in a sauce pan with about a pint of water (dechlorinated). Dump that into the bottling bucket during or after racking. If you do this, sanitized your brew spoon and give it a few gentle stirs. Don't slosh. Sorry to hear you're in this situation.

 

Ever tried it? You can doubt it all you like, but many, many Brewers; much more experienced than I and with world renowned resumes do this as well. It was a tip I picked up from Gordon Strong and I noticed the delicate sweetness and increased points in comps when doing so.

So- you don't do anything out of the ordinary to try and break away and stand out from the pack when entering comps?

To each his own...

 

@iTunesUpdates think of it this way man – it'll be a pain in the ass to do, but at least your beer's not ruined. It can be saved!

 

I can see them possibly over carbonating, but not exploding. The only time I've ever had bottles explode was due to an infection, never by adding too much priming sugars. Not to say it can't happen, but there's gotta be some serious carbonation in there for those bottles to burst. I think you'll be ok.

 

This kind of situation is why I like to always have carobnation drops handy. I don't like to prime with them, and never have as a first option, but if your beer is already in the bottle and it doesn't carb for whatever reason, you can always rip off the caps, toss a drop or two in each bottle, then recap. No measuring/pouring/cleaning up what you inevitably spill.

 

How could it add any sweetness at all, unless carbonation wasn't finished? The sugars in honey are for practical purposes 100% fermentable.

I can say that I have never detected any sweetness from honey in any honey beer. The non-sweet honey flavor/aromas are another matter.