Category Archives: making beer

Feb23

How to Brew Up Some Good, Healthy Fun

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How to Brew Up Some Good, Healthy Fun

As promised, this post includes herbal ale recipes, and one great mead recipe. Always sterilise your equipment and bottles, and use only stainless steel pots and steel or wood utensils — no aluminum, that can react with your brew.

My family makes cognac and liquer, and I spent a fair bit of time as a wee one touring factories. But as an adult, my first personal foray into brewing any sort of alcohol began with mead. My very first recipe was a success, and I have tried many variations of it. They have all been very tasty tho some variations had a bit too much fermentation, and there were a few explosions! Those recipes have been retired, so have no fear: the mead recipes in this post has never exploded, and always tastes great.

Most mead recipes you’ll find online involve months of aging before they are ready to drink: not so this recipe! It is best drunk within 6 months, but can be tasted as early as the week after you begin.

* Speed Mead Recipe *
(a refreshing, light but strong mead)

3 gallons water
2 Tbs Powdered Ginger or 4 2-inch slices fresh ginger root
4 Cinnamon Sticks
2 lemon’s peel
1/2 Grapefruit or Orange Peel
1 Tsp Fennel Seed
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
5 LB Honey
Baker’s Yeast, 1 packet

1. Bring water to a boil, lower heat, add spices and simmer spices in water for 10 minutes.
2. Add Honey, stirring constantly. Do Not Boil, this will kill the live aspect of the honey.Skim off any white “scum” that appears, this is the non-soluble part of the honey. When no more scum forms (after about 1/2 hour), remove pot from heat and cover for 12 hours.
3. Strain liquid to remove spice particles. Dissolve yeast in a 1/8 cup warm water, and add to liquid. Cover and leave for 12 hours.
4. Rack (pour slowly) into clean, sterile jugs, leaving the settled yeast dregs at the bottom of the pot. Fold clean paper towel or fabric, place over top of jug, secure with rubber band and leave undisturbed at room temperature (pantry is great for this) for 2 days.
5. Refridgerate or put out in cool area at 40-50F for 12 hours.
6. Rack again, leaving any dregs. Refridgerate or put out in cool area at 40-50F for 2 days days.
7. Add 1/4 cup vodka to kill yeast. Cap jugs and refridgerate or store in cool area for 3-4 more days, minimum, to allow carbonation.
8. Bottle and/or drink!

* Red Rose HerbAle *

5 gallons Water
1 cup rosehips
1/4 cup dried lemongrass
3/4 cup fresh ginger, sliced
1 tsp coriander seeds
5 lbs sugar
1 Tbs. baker’s yeast

1. Bring water to a boil. Lower heat and simmer herbs in water for 15 minutes over low heat.
2. Remove from heat, let cool enough to handle, strain and add sugar.
3. Let cool to 75-80 degrees and add yeast. Stir and cover. Let sit for 48 hours undisturbed.
4. Bottle. This will continue to ferment slowly for a month or two in bottle, but can be drunk as early as when it is bottled. Ours was best after two months, and stored great for several more (beyond that I don’t know, it was all gone by then!!)

* Spring Cleaning HerbAle *

3 gallons Water
3/4 dried dandelion leaf
3/4 dried nettle leaf
1/8 cup dried orange peel
1 tsp cardamom
3 lbs sugar
2/3 Tbs. baker’s yeast

1. Bring water to a boil. Lower heat and simmer herbs in water for 15 minutes over low heat.
2. Remove from heat, let cool enough to handle, strain and add sugar.
3. Let cool to 75-80 degrees and add yeast. Stir and cover. Let sit for 48 hours undisturbed.
4. Bottle. This will continue to ferment slowly for a month or two in bottle, but can be drunk as early as when it is bottled.

Feb21

BYOB — Brew Your Own Beer

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BYOB — Brew Your Own Beer

After I get off work today we’re taking a little road trip to our “local” brewing supply company about 30 minutes away. There we’ll be buying some of the ingredients we need to brew some of our own beer and wine, and I’ll also be picking up some malt powder or extract because, well, it tastes good and is good for you! As a child, I grew up on a fabulous mixture of malt, carob and brewer’s yeast mixed with Milk called Tiger’s Milk. Unfortunately the company now only makes snack bars, and I really miss that drink sometimes… But I digress.

In our home, we love to make things from scratch — presents, foods, furniture, and yes: alcohol. My husband dreams of the day when I’ll let him set up his own still. For now, he is limited to the softer stuff. I like my home, and I think a still needs to be far far away from it!

In the past we’ve made honey mead, dandelion wine, herbal ales (the biggest hit of those was a rosehip & lemongrass brewed with sugar, about 9 percent alcohol.), clone beers, elderbery wine and red grape wines. This spring I want to make an old-school, 1400′s style ale with dandelion and nettles: cleansing your liver and kidneys while you drink!

My husband is Irish/Scottish, and a big fan of the beer. I’m an herbalist, and believe that if everyone switched from modern beers to drinking more of the old-style ales from the days before hops-style beers, they’d all be beter off. Someday, I can see us running a small brewery where we make ales like that… Hops are a relatively new introduction to beer that became quite popular b/c their bitterness helps preserve beer — great for when beer was all you had to drink on long sea voyages where water wouldn’t keep long. But hops are also chock-full of phyto-estrogens that are great for calming and for menopausal women, but not great for men: they don’t need all that estrogen, and it puts a lot of extra weight around their abdomens. So, I do my part to try and brew an herbal ale with healing properties for every modern hops beer he brews. The rosehip beer I brewed had ginger in it, great for digestion, gas and metabolism, and the rosehips added a lot of vitamin C, calcium and pretty rosy color…

I’m not sure what we’ll come back with this time, but you can bet there’ll be some recipes and reports here on Monday. I’ll also go and dig up that great rosehip recipe. In the meantime, we’ll be at the brewing store and reading our favorite brewing book.