Connecticut Food and Farm’s Field Guide to Infused Honey

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LAVENDER HONEY IN YOUR TEA BEFORE BEDTIME, MINT HONEY SWEETENING YOUR LEMONADE, BLUEBERRY HONEY ON A WARM SCONE, OR ESPRESSO HONEY OVER VANILLA ICE CREAM… Infused honey delivers the delicious flavors and benefits of both botanicals and raw honey in each spoonful!

The process for infusing honey easy: In a clean glass jar, stir to combine 1-2 tablespoons of dried herbal leaves and flowers with 8 oz. of raw, local honey. Seal the jar tightly and store in a warm spot, around 100 degrees. Stir with a chopstick or shake every few days to keep the herbs submerged. Let the mixture infuse for 1-3 weeks until you’ve achieved the intensity of flavor you’d like, then warm the honey to liquefy it, strain the herbs out, and bottle.

(After straining, leftover honey-soaked herbs can be used to make a sweet tea concentrate that can be diluted into a tasty hot or iced beverage. Or add to sparkling wine and fresh fruit for a tea mimosa!)

Honey isn’t particularly effective at extracting the properties of dense, woody materials like bark and roots at room-temperature, so additional heat can really help the infusion process along. In a saucepan, gently heat your honey and herbs, folding together with a wooden spoon, until the honey just begins to bubble. Remove from heat and let cool.

Repeat 3-4 times until the honey has infused to your taste. Store your herb-infused honey in a cool, dark place.

Use herbs singly or combine for more complexity: cinnamon sticks, cloves, star anise, citrus zest, crystallized ginger, unsweetened coconut flakes, matcha, chai, chili pepper, rose, lavender, chamomile, 2

mint, dried fruits, crushed dark roast coffee beans, cacao nibs, turmeric, roasted garlic, rosemary… let your palate be your guide!

These ingredients must be dried as using fresh herbs would add moisture that can lead to contamination or mold.

Although most herbs must be removed from the honey after the infusion, vanilla beans are the exception. The flavor of vanilla bean honey continues to develop over time. Use 2 vanilla beans per cup of honey. Slice each vanilla bean lengthwise, then run the back of your knife against cut the side of bean to remove seeds. Put seeds into a clean jar.

Then, cut each bean in half and add the four pieces to the jar. Pour honey overtop. Seal jar and set in a warm place for a few weeks to infuse. Vanilla honey is dreamy for baking, added to warm milk, or atop your morning oatmeal.

Herbal infused honeys make delightful gifts.

Handmade labels and serving suggestions round out the presentation. In restaurants, culinary professionals showcase the nuanced flavors of infused honeys as a cheese board addition, to sweeten cocktails, drizzle over ricotta toast, in salad dressings and more.

Here are three of Chef Carlos Perez’ favorite recipes using infused honeys that he makes (and you can, too!):

BAKED PEARS

with Pistachios, Raisins & Lemon Rosemary Honey INGREDIENTS 6 Bartlett Pears, peeled 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon 2 tbsp lemon juice 1/2 cup chopped pistachios, or other nut 1/2 cup raisins, preferably golden 1/3 cup lemon-rosemary honey INSTRUCTIONS 1. Preheat the oven to 350F. 2. Cut the pears in half, using a measuring spoon or melon baller, scoop out the core and seeds.

3. Mix brown sugar, cinnamon, lemon juice, pistachios and raisins. Toss mixture with pears. Place pears cut side up on baking sheet and sprinkle remaining sugar-nut mixture over pears.

4. Bake for about 40 minutes, or until a knife easily pierces through to the center of each pear, and sugar mixture turns to a syrup. Drizzle with lemon-rosemary honey and serve warm.

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ORANGE-ROSE HONEY PORRIDGE with Fresh Blackberries & Torn Mint INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

3/4 cup coconut, almond, or cow’s milk

1. Bring milk and cinnamon to a simmer in a saucepan. Stir in oats and reduce heat to medium. Cook for 1 minute.

Remove from heat, stir in honey, cover and let sit for 3 minutes.

1/4 tsp cinnamon 1/2 cup instant oats 1 tbsp orange-rose honey, plus more for drizzling 3 tbsp Greek yogurt Handful fresh blackberries 2 mint leaves, torn

2. Transfer to a bowl. Top with Greek yogurt, fresh berries, torn mint, then finish by drizzling additional orangerose honey over the top.

SESAME & HOT PEPPER HONEY CHICKEN INGREDIENTS 4 cloves garlic minced 2 tbsp ginger, minced 1 shallot, minced 3 tbsp hot pepper honey (made with dried chili d’arbol and chipotles) 1 tbsp sesame oil 3 tbsp soy sauce 1/4 cup chicken stock 1/2 tsp kosher salt 1/2 tsp ground black pepper 1 1/2 lbs chicken thighs INSTRUCTIONS 1. Combine garlic, ginger, shallot, honey, sesame oil, soy sauce, chicken stock, salt, and pepper in a casserole dish. Add chicken thighs, toss to coat, wrap, refrigerate and let marinate for 24-48 hrs.

2. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Unwrap chicken thighs, place casserole dish in oven, and bake for 20-25 minutes or until internal temperature of chicken reaches 165F. Set oven to broil for final 2 minutes to crisp up skin.

3. Remove from oven and serve.

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CONNECTICUT MAKERS’ INFUSED HONEYS

Here are three of our favorite CT-made infused honeys, available for online ordering:

1. Bee Well Honey is crafted to be “an all-natural, multi-purpose, delicious,

medicinal wonder.” It’s a blend of local raw honey and herbs and spices revered for their health benefits including cinnamon, ginger, cloves, elderberry and licorice root powders, astragalus, olive leaf powder, echinacea, and barberry. A favorite of herbalists, this tastes like Christmas morning. farminsteadical.com

2. Three Sisters Lavender Honey is an all-natural, raw, wildflower honey with an infusion of lavender. It’s a very popular product of the Essex, Connecticut farm and is available only in limited supply. threesistersfarms.com Hilary Brooks, Bar Manager for Iron and Grain Co. and former Tasting Room Manager/ Mixologist for Hartford Flavor Company uses it to make:

THE MAINE SQUEEZE

HONEY LAVENDER SIMPLE SYRUP INGREDIENTS

INGREDIENTS

1 cup lavender honey

2 oz Litchfield Distillery Gin

2/3 cup water

.75 oz Lavender Honey Simple Syrup*

¼ cup fresh or dried lavender (or ½ if you

.75 oz Fresh Lemon Juice

like a more intensely floral flavor)

muddled wild Maine blueberries Optional: 2 dashes Stonewall Apiaries Propolis Bitters

INSTRUCTIONS

(hard to find but adds an amazing honey flavor)

1. Bring honey and water to a simmer over medium high heat, stirring occasionally.

Add lavender and let simmer for two minutes.

INSTRUCTIONS Mix all, garnish with fresh lavender flower.

2. Remove from heat and cover. Let stand overnight, then strain through a fine mesh sieve and store in the fridge.

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3. Stonewall Apiary makes raw, unfiltered Garlic Honey (try it as a killer pizza topping, a funky-sweetener for vinaigrette tossed with local greens, drizzled on feta and flatbread, as a glaze with lemon and olive oil for chicken wings, or on a cheese plate) and Ginger Honey, a key ingredient in this Little House Brewing homebrew recipe: ct-honey.com

QUARANTINE KÖLSCH

– a Stonewall Apiary infused-honey homebrew recipe by Little House Brewing Company We love brewing with local honey at Little House, and you really can’t do any better than Stonewall Apiary’s honey in our opinion. While we use it as an accent in many of our staple beers, the one we feature it most prominently in is “Sleepy Bee”, our Honey Kölsch. When we first heard about the idea of flavor-infused honey, we immediately thought of Sleepy Bee as a candidate for some fun recipe experimentation. Ginger works quite well in lighter style beers, and the beer already features honey, we realized… so why not marry the two?

This recipe should produce a beer with everything we love about Sleepy Bee – light, crisp, effervescent and dependable drinkability – but with a subtle depth and complexity from the addition of ginger. Please try it out and let us know how it tastes. Or better yet, save some for us to try!

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TARGET METRICS

STEP BY STEP

O.G. 1.045

Prep If using liquid yeast, make a yeast starter prior to brew day. If you want to skip the hassle of a starter, use 3 packages of yeast.

Proper pitch rates are key!

F.G. 1.007 IBUs 20 SRM 4 SHOPPING LIST Fermentables 7 pounds Thrall Family Farms pilsner malt 10 ounces Thrall Family Farms white wheat malt 8 ounces Gambrinus honey malt 10 ounces Stonewall Apiary Ginger-infused Honey Hops 2.5 ounces German Tettnang

On brew day, mill your grains (if you or your homebrew shop haven’t done so already), and start heating 2.75 gallons strike water. Note: this will provide a mash thickness of 1.35 quarts/pound, which we find works best when using malt from Thrall Family Farms.

Mash & Sparge Gently mix in the grains with the strike water and slowly stir to ensure an even mash temperature of 150F. Rest at this temperature for at least 60 minutes. While the mash rests, prepare your sparge water.

With 15 minutes or so left in the mash rest, begin recirculating the wort. Note: if you don’t have a pump for this step, simply use any heat resistant plastic or metal container to drain wort from the mash and gently redistribute back through the top of the mash.

1 ounce Hallertau Mittelfrüh Yeast WLP029 Kölsch, or Wy2565, or LalBrew Köln

When the mash rest is complete, begin sparging and collect approximately 7 gallons of wort into your kettle.

Optional advanced mash schedule: At Little House we like to perform a Hockhurz “Short and High” multi-step mash schedule. We split the mash rest into two parts: a 30 minute rest at 145F, and another at 160F. You can move the mash across these two temperatures with direct heat, hot water infusions, or decoctions.

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Boil

Fermentation

Bring the wort to a vigorous boil and start a timer for 75 minutes.

Quickly cool the wort down to 55F and transfer to a sanitized fermentation vessel.

Aerate the wort well and pitch the yeast.

At 60 minutes remaining, add 1.5 ounces of Tettnang At 15 minutes, add .5 ounces more of Tettnang and .5 ounces of the Hallertauer Mittelfrüh At 10 minutes, add whirflocc and yeast nutrient At 5 minutes, begin slowly mixing in the infused honey. Continue mixing slowly until the end of the boil.

Allow the wort to rise to 58F and ferment until terminal gravity is nearly reached – at this point allow the temperature to rise to 65F and beyond. This ensures a clean and quick fermentation.

Cool the beer down to 33F, or as cold as you can get it, and allow it to condition for at least 2 weeks before racking to a keg or bottling.

At flameout, add .5 ounces more of both hops, and let stand for 5 minutes Optional: before bottling or kegging you can taste test the beer to examine how much ginger flavor is coming through. Want to add more? Make a tincture by soaking freshly chopped ginger in a small amount of grain alcohol – just enough to cover everything. Let this tincture rest for 7 days, then dose the liquid into your beer to taste. How much additional flavor you add is up to you!

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A SUPPLEMENT TO CONNECTICUT FOOD AND FARM MAGA WINTER CAPLANSON PHOTOS.

AZINE.