question about working with honey

[Papa]

Dear cellarrat:

Why do you want to sterilize your honey?

Your honey selections are good and I would like to add Thyme Honey by the Attiki company. It is worth looking for it.

the sterilization is primarily to kill any wild yeast that might be present. i'll look for the thyme honey, thanks

i'm using honey to condition some of my homebrewed beer. i need to sterilize it first, i'm planning on quickly boiling 4 oz. of honey in about 2 cups of water.
will i lose some of the subtle flavor and aroma of the honey (it will be lavender or heather honey) by boiling?
am i going to partially carmelize the sugars by heating it?

[thebighat]

You will lose some of the aroma by heating it. I don't think beekeepers heat it much over 100 degrees to filter it. I also wonder if wild yeasts could live in it. Do you have to sterilize it? Call a local beekeeping association and ask. I belong to one and they are really helpful and a lot of people make their own mead. They'd know.

[layjo]

Hello cellarrat and welcome to cheftalk! I remember some information on using honey in the brewing process on the National Honey Board's website. Here is a link to that section, scroll down the list of links on the page that you looking for. It will download information to your computer in .pdf format (to be read by Adobe Acrobat Reader). Hope it helps any!
http://www.nhb.org/foodtech/index.html

[mudbug]

Papa and thebighat,

When making homemade beer, it is essential that everything be sterilized. Browse through any making beer 101 info and it's drilled into your head. Besides, with all the work that goes into it, better to be safe than sorry.