Honey Craft Beer

What is happening after its at bottled:
Yeast: There is a minute amount of residual yeast left in suspension when bottling, but it's not possible to see this with the naked eye. At this stage it may settle on the bottom of the bottle during long storage periods as a thin sediment. This is harmless to consume, and is rich in B-complex vitamins. This is the same thing that is sold in health food stores as "brewers yeast". Hops used in the brewing process are during this stage rendering hop bitterness/flavor/and aroma. Their individual character is stabilized during the boil so they do not "work" after the beer is packaged.

Why craft beer must be refrigerated:

Craft beer is unpasteurized and as such needs to be treated like milk. Keeping it unrefrigerated will promote premature ageing and could lead to spoilage. Unlike the large industrial brewers, craft beer is not normally pasteurized nor sterile filtered. This is why the flavor is superior to industrial brews. Pasteurization and sterile filtering remove much of the complex characters and unique blending that makes craft beers so special.  Keeping beer chilled also helps preserve the hop character that degrades over time. Honey Beer is however not very hoppy at all. In fact it derives most of it's character from the malts, and a very small amount actually comes from the honey and orange peel. The hop character is almost non-existent. Therefore it has to be kept chilled.

When the honey is added:
The honey is added during the brewing stage as the wort comes to a boil, and is then boiled for 2 hrs.  For those that don’t know, wort is the liquid extracted from the mashing process during the brewing of beer and contains the sugars that will be fermented by the brewer’s yeast to produce alcohol.  This sustained boil renders it microbiologically stable, as honey contains many spoilage organisms, pollen, bee parts, etc. The long boil also helps clarify the honey as it contains haze forming factions. Therefore, the honey becomes part of the sugar chain the yeast feeds on during fermentation. Honey is chiefly sucrose and fructose, as such is 100% fermentable. Varietals such as Orange Blossom Honey do leave some residual character from the source the bees feed on, but depending on the other variables such as amount of honey, malts, hops, ABV, etc. this can quickly become lost in the flavor profile as it's a delicate character. This is chiefly why in many honey ale some orange peel was added as well, this was in order to insure that a faint orange character would remain present