Herbs in non-hopped beers

[TimT]

Is it worth the buy? Yes! Readable, good list of plants - the only real problem being the lack of Australian plants. (Eucalyptus appears - not much else, I think). The focus is largely on the use of plants in spirits, but certainly gives lots of ideas about stuff you can do with those plants in spirits and wine and beer as well. Copious sections on wheat and barley and even yeast (that's a digression since yeast isn't really a plant) and hops, tables of herbs, etc. The author seems to be more of a spirit enthusiast than a beer enthusiast, but yeah. Lots of good stuff.

I got mine for Christmas which might explain why I'm so enthusiastic about it though.... definitely well worth the buy if you get someone else to get it for you!

 

[TimT]

Got some mugwort today. It's from the Artemisia family (so related to wormwood), and you see it popping up in old brew recipes, so I'm looking forward to using it. How good are naturalists and organic food stores? I mean, I know all that stuff - dandelion root, elderflower, elecampane, meadowsweet, etc - is supposed to be there for 'traditional medicinal uses' and all that (pretty sceptical about a lot of that) but me, I'm just interested in how it'll go in a brew. Great resource.

Incidentally , gave my garden saison - raspberry leaf, strawberry leaf, yarrow leaf, yarrow flower, and lemon rind added to the brew - a taste today. Lovely sour-bitterness, a kind of combination of gentle malt flavours and esters produced by the yeast. Should be good for bottling soon.

 

[Econwatson]

Not sure if you Aussies have it, but we have a beer called Fraoch brewed by Williams Brothers: http://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/beerboard/bottles/fraoch-heather-ale

It's quite tasty and lists Heather and Bogmyrtle as principal ingredients. Try and get a hold of a bottle, it's one of the few popular beers brewed with herbs here.

 

[TimT]

Today I've been brewing a porter with wormwood as the bittering. Base malt is Vienna, with some Munich malt and chocolate malt added to the mash. Added wormwood at the start of a one-hour boil and the smell quickly filled the house - beautiful minty-sweet smell. The taste it added to the wort was beautifully complex - bitter, but with liquorish and minty notes. To my nose it even had a kind of honey smell to it. (Especially fortunate as I plan to be adding honey to the brew in a day or two, at high krausen).

Wormwood beer, folks. It's good. Get into it.

 

[evildrakey]

Tim T - if you are willing to expand out to mead's, then Sir Kenelm Digby's 1669 manuscript for mead recipes is chock full of unusual recipes with herbs...

 

[TimT]

Oh yeah - I've got a few meads Evildrakey. My first was a Digby recipe (fairly simple one with sultanas and not much else), my later ones all have spice and herb additions. He has a few hopped meads too, I recall.

Digby is also an excellent source for other cooking information: he has one of the original recipes for the traditional English slipcoat cheese which I used as guidance when I made one recently.

 

[evildrakey]

My first was a Digby recipe (fairly simple one with sultanas and not much else)

Lady Belliasses Meath? Raisins and Cardamon?

 

[TimT]

Funnily enough I have the shortcut to Digby on my computer, so I'll just open up and have a look see....

Ah yes, probably was that recipe though I skipped the cardamom addition, possibly should not have as that may have helped to balance the mead out a bit better. It was my first mead, that one, and Digby was excellent - so many recipes, so many ideas.

 

[TimT]

Poured the first of my batch of yarrow beer last night. It had carbonated nicely (though maybe I might give it another week to come to full maturity), and had a nice round fruity sour-bitterness to it. (A lot of this probably came from the esters produced by the yeast rather than the yarrow).

But I noticed it had a funny effect - or should I say lack of effect - on me: when you drink hopped beers, you get a little hit of sleepiness because of the sedative effects of the hops. Not sure what happens when you drink a few, but usually your body seems to adjust to it somehow and you relax into it.

With the yarrow beer I didn't have the sleepy effect. I only noticed this a while after. Hm, I didn't get sleepy.....

Weird but not unpleasant. The best way of describing this surprise is by quoting a Mervyn Peake poem that has a similar surprise (a rather effective non-effect) in the last line:

O'er seas that have no beaches
To break their waves upon,
I floated with twelve peaches,
A sofa, and a swan;

The sharp waves broke above us,
The blunt waves broke around,
There was no-one to love us,
No hope of being found;

When, on the blank horizon
So endlessly adrip
I saw! All of a sudden -
No sign of any ship.

 

[TimT]

There's a good benefit for herbal beers - good beers for a break at work. If you can persuade your boss that no, no, it's all right to have a drink in the middle of the day, it's not going to make you sleepy because it doesn't have hops - you've got it made.

 

[GalBrew]

I think that you will be pushing **** uphill convincing your boss that the problem is the hops and not the ethanol. Or maybe we could all have a wine or a scotch with lunch?

 

[TimT]

Admittedly since I work at home and am just a contractor I don't have that much problem convincing my boss....

 

[TimT]

wine and scotch with lunch

Ah, the liquid lunch. But we all know about the 'long lunches' of the 70s, or the great drinkers of the past (Churchill, etc). Perhaps current intolerance to this concept points more to changing attitudes about drink.

 

[Hintadupfing]

http://www.gruitale.com/intro_en.htm

http://blacksmithsarms.wordpress.com/2013/07/18/hard-core-gruit/

 

[GalBrew]

wine and scotch with lunch

Ah, the liquid lunch. But we all know about the 'long lunches' of the 70s, or the great drinkers of the past (Churchill, etc). Perhaps current intolerance to this concept points more to changing attitudes about drink.

Truely a golden age in humanity. Unfortunately no such thing exists in my line of work.

 

[TimT]

Brew update: yesterday I took a sample from the wormwood porter - now slowing down fermenting, down to about 1.008 gravity - and had a taste test. Disgusting. Like strong medicine. Wormwood is overpowering (and my additions were pretty much the minimum amount recommended on the recipe). So tips for brewing wormwood in future: *really* small amounts, in combination with other herbs. (Or, easier, don't.) (But it would work if used judiciously - small, possibly other herbs and spices to round out the flavour, etc). I make these mistakes so you don't have to!

 

[Ross]

......It's why we use hops

Don't get me wrong, I love seeing people brew with ancient herbs & spices, but there's a reason beer is now made with hops - THEY TASTE BETTER.


Cheers Ross

 

[TimT]

Hops are what my mum would call an acquired taste. Folks who haven't tasted them before would take a bit of persuading before they really took to using them. It's worth it - they can add some wonderful properties to brews - but they are not fundamentally necessary for brewing. Many different flavourings have been used over the centuries, and I think they're probably worth a bit of time to get to know too

 

[SergeMarx]

Dodonaea viscosa - Native sticky Hop Bush.

Always wanted to try it - would love to find maltable native grain too, but that's possibly asking too much. apart from native rice maybe?

 

[thylacine]

Czech 'Nettle beer': http://www.beerpal.com/Dum-Kopøivové-Beer/31401/

Visited Prague's Pivovarsky Dum last November. Including their green coloured Nettle beer. Glass walls separated the functioning brewery from the restaurant. Enjoyed viewing three open fermentation tanks bubbling away just two metres away from our table. i.e.. through the glass wall...
Nettle was OK but my focus was on the city's growing "tank beer" offerings.

Cheers...