Beer Forum

I was wondering if anyone had any experience brewing biere de miele and could offer some advice

My thought was trying to use orange blossom honey to play off the character of the saison yeast. The base will be a fairly sessionable saison (about 6% abv). I'm wondering when to add the honey. Should I do it in the whirlpool or the 2'? If in the 2', how do I get it to mix into the beer well? If you've brewed a biere de miel, how do you do it?

My intended recipe is

Amount Item Type % or IBU
9.50 lb Pilsner (2 Row) Ger (2.0 SRM) Grain 82.6 %
0.50 lb Honey Malt (25.0 SRM) Grain 4.3 % (add to the honey character... is 0.5# too much in such a light beer?)
24.00 gm Palisade [7.00%] (60 min) Hops 19.1 IBU
28.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40%] (15 min) Hops 8.5 IBU
28.00 gm Styrian Goldings [5.40%] (0 min) Hops -
1.50 lb Orange Blossom Honey (1.0 SRM) Sugar 13.0 %
1 Pkgs Belgian Saison (Wyeast Labs #3724) Yeast-Ale
OG: 1.055 Anticipated FG: 1.008
IBU: 27

I'd go with 3 lbs in the whirlpool, but that's just me.
Don't worry too much about the honey not "mixing in" if you add it to the secondary.
The yeast will still go nuts on it and they'll get it all.
You can add it a bit at a time over several days if that still bothers you.
Also, it WILL kick up a true second fermentation, so you'll want to use a larger secondary than normal.

HTH-