I'm lichen this ale

[TimT]

To add to the list of weird things I may one day brew: lichen beer.

The second surprise is folks used to make a lot of booze from lichen. For about 50 years in the 1800’s Sweden led the world in lichen alcohol production with the rest of Europe and Russia joining in. It was viewed as an alternative to grain alcohol. Lichen brandy was a big hit, and it was also used in the making of Akvavit, a traditional caraway-flavored spirit. That said, I have to run off on a non-plant tangent here for a moment.

 

[TimT]

Bad! Some lichens - up to 10 per cent, apparently - contain cyanobacteria: blue-green algae. This has been linked to motor-neurone disease (and other degenerative diseases).

Plan to make lichen beer may need a good deal more research....

 

[Not For Horses]

Uncooked lichen sounds like quite the treat.
Tastes like aspirin and will "painfully attack your digestive track(sic)".
Where do I sign up.

 

[TimT]

Oddly enough I have never ever tasted aspirin. Anyway, I thought the done thing with pills was to just pop in your mouth and swallow without chewing?

 

[Glot]

I will remember that about the cyanobacteria next time I am nawring on the back fence.
"Blue Green algae" gets a bad wrap due to the few that inhabit out water sometimes. There are many many cyanobacteria.

 

[TimT]

I wondered that Glot. Is it the same cyanobacteria that produces the toxin? Does it produce this toxin in amounts too small to worry about? Does the formation of lichen in anyway alter this toxin? Are the lichens considered by tradition to be inedible those ones that contain cyanobacteria? Would the process of preparing lichen for consumption (soaking them in a solution of bicarbonate of soda) tend to get rid of the toxin (or enhance it), and would fermentation tend to get rid of the toxin (or enhance it)? Lot of questions...! Oh, and maybe I should hold off on that plan to brew with fence posts, also....

 

[Glot]

If you are asking these questions, you may like to learn more about this important group of bacteria. Here is a good starting point. Nothing to do with brewing but to tie it into this site, you can drink a beer while you read it.

www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanointro/html

 

[Glot]

must be a slight error in that link so just paste it into google

 

[TimT]

Thanks Glot - I'd better look into it sometime, that link is a good place at which to start!

 

[lordpaulbailey]

I love this idea, may give it ago

 

[TimT]

Love to know how you go Lord Paul!

 

[TimT]

Activate plan lichen!

With no transcripts coming in today for work, I decided to give this lichen beer thang a go.

When we were away in Bright the other week I got about 300 grams of this stuff called 'Icelandic Moss' from the organics shop. I kind of bought it and looked it up afterwards; it appears in a lot of traditional Icelandic recipes - soups and teas and the like - is quite bitter because of acids it contains, and is actually not a moss at all, but a lichen. (I'll never trust a name again). It doesn't contain cyanobacteria - the 'algae' half of this particular symbiotic entity is a 'green algae', rather than a 'blue-green algae', apparently. Whatever they are.

Brewed a small batch wheat beer today, on the assumption that a sweetish wheat beer would hold the lichenish flavours better than, say, a big malty porter. About four litres: 500 g wheat malt, 400 g pale ale malt, 100 g Munich malt; mash at around 66 to get a bit of body and a bit of unfermentable sweetness; add some lemon peel in 30 mins before the end of the boil just because.... (because we've got shitloads of lemons, that's why), and add lichen after I turn the stove off.

I chucked it in, a tablespoon at a time, tasting each time.

At the moment it's still cooling down: I think I lost some of the licheny goodness in the heat (I could smell it evaporating from the pot), but there's a kind of delicate weedy bitterness to it. (I also chucked in six bags of chamomile tea).

I'm going to ferment that lot out, and if necessary add more lichen and/or lemon peel in secondary fermentation if I want some back-bittering. (Apparently the Iceland Moss bitter acids are readily soluble in alcohol). Definitely no hops: I think they'd be too intense for these delicate flavours; I want some weird witbier yeastiness to go with some funny licheny flavours.

Plan for the future: do a beer that contains *even more* microbiota: fungus (yeast, lichen); bacteria (lacto-bacilli for souring)... anything else?

 

[vykuza]

Definitely going to need to dry lichen or keg lichen that one.

Sorry - couldn't resist!

 

[TimT]

Moss you persist with these jokes?

 

[Lincoln2]

Moss you persist with these jokes?

I don't know; they're kind of growing on me.

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

Intriguing. I'm going to iceland in a few weeks. Might have to try this: http://www.nordicstore.net/iceland_moss_schnapps_4487_prd1.htm

 

[vykuza]

Moss you persist with these jokes?

Hey, I think they are quite fungi!

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

There is mush room for improvement of humor here.

 

[vykuza]

HEY! Are you trying to start some truffle?!!?

 

[TimT]

I wouldn't lichen it to that.