Amylase in raw honey? Wild aspergillus?

Fresh raw honey is supposed to have some diastatic power. I don't recall how much, though I'm guessing it's not much. My notes on that topic are a few thousand miles away at the moment. The honey has to be fresh though, as the enzymes degrade over time.

I don't know about capturing aspergillus, but catching yeast is easy and can be done from just about any fruit or even the wind. I've done it by placing a cheesecloth-covered jar of fresh wort on the porch overnight. In the morning, you've got yeast! Step it up slowly and you can build a pitchable amount. Made some good beer with it, though obviously YMMV and location and time of day and season will give you different results. There are at least a couple threads about wild yeast capturing floating around here.

Unless you know the age and processing history of your honey (e.g. you or a friend are a beekeeper), I would count the diastatic power of honey as zero. Even with really fresh honey I wouldn't count on it to convert very much starch.

Commercial preparations of amylase are cheap and easy to use. I'd recommend those if you don't want to work with malt. Otherwise, any base malt will have enough oompf to convert usually 120% of its own weight. Some of the slightly-kilned malts like Munich will convert only a little extra, maybe 5%.

Other things include sweet potato. Again my notes are not near, but it's supposed to have some nice enzymes. I haven't had a chance to play with it myself yet. The Journal of the Institute of Brewing & Distilling has some articles on stuff like this if you want to take a look.

jens183 said:

Is there amylase or other starch to sugar converting enzymes in honey/raw honey? And if so how much starch(grams,oz,etc) can be converted per lbs of honey/raw honey?(I've searched but cant seem to find any information from a brewing perspective)

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See This Thread.

Guess I mixed units a bit, I meant than Munich should be able to convert itself plus 5% or so, so 1.05 g per g. But you have to count the malt as that first gram. Same for the base malt, 1.2 g per g but it counts as that first gram itself. So for "other ingredients" you're looking at 0.2 g/g for base malt and about 0.05 g/g for something like Munich. Similar range to honey, which does not have to convert itself.

One thing I remember sweet potato having in particular is the cell-wall degrading enzyme (can't remember the name...). This is important if you are using other exogenous sources, such as honey, which primarily have only the free starch degrading enzymes. With just honey, or some of the commercial preparations of enzymes, the cell wall degradation is the limiting step to getting the starch out. Another way of accomplishing the destruction of cell walls is cooking the grain (e.g. in boiling water), just remember to add the enzymes after the mush has cooled so you don't denature them. [also look up cereal mash.]

Malted barley/wheat has all these enzymes, so it will convert itself without help. You just need to get creative if you're thinking of adding raw grains, flour, etc.