I made 1 liter with a modified version of a recipe from this book. To make 4 liters you need
1 kilo nettle tips.
10 grams ginger
Danstar Windsor yeast
2 lemons
800 grams sugar
200 grams honey
4 liters of water
Pick the tops of good clean nettles then rinse them. If you get dragged through the nettles by your dog make sure to keep your dignity.
Simmer the nettles for half an hour with the lemon juice and the ginger. I strained off the liquid from the nettles. When this strained off water starts cooling you can add the sugar but I left the honey till the water was at about 60 celsius.
Add the yeast when the water is at about 20 degrees as any warmer and you risk killing the yeast. Well when I give this recipe of things to do, you would be better off if you did not bother.
After a week I gave it a go. The odour my wife kindly described as "smelling like death". The taste was not that bad but I would not recommend it. If you know how to fix the recipe please tell me in the comments.
In fact I've used it to bait the garden in an attempt to kill off the slugs that plague my life. I have checked before and slugs show no preference for different beers. So hopefully they get rid of this crap for me.
it looks a lot like wee
ReplyDeleteIt smells a lot like wee. And if your wee looks like that horse you should probably seek medical attention.
ReplyDeleteHow about a nice estery German weissbier yeast? Though it does seem like a waste of a lot of perfectly good honey and ginger. What flavour are the nettles supposed to impart?
ReplyDeleteI think whatever is wrong with this recipe will not be fixed by yeast. It might help but not enough. The look is similar to what others end up with
ReplyDeletehttp://www.selfsufficientish.com/nettlebeer.htm
Nettles seem to be a replacement for hops giving a tangy bitter taste I believe.