I’ve brewed a number of different heather ales over the last handful of years. This is the most recent one, as requested in the ‘Pics of recent brews’ topic. This was a 5 gallon batch.
Fermentables:
10 lb - Golden Promise
2 lb - Vienna
1.5 lb - Crystal 40
1 lb - Honey Malt
1.5 lb - Honey (I used tupelo honey, but whatever you want)
Mash at 152° for 75 min
Boil schedule:
60 min - EKG - .5 oz
60 min - Heather tips - 2 oz
30 min - Fuggle - .5 oz
30 min - Heather tips - 2 oz
30 min - Meadowsweet - .25 oz
30 min - Mugwort - .25 oz
5 min - Heather tips - 2 oz
5 min - Meadowsweet - .25 oz
5 min - Mugwort - .25 oz
Yeast - WLP028 Edinburgh Scottish ale
3 additional things to mention:
After kegging, I added another 8 oz of dissolved honey (again tupelo) to backsweeten. I believe my amounts on the heather tips were a bit too high, and the beer was a little bitter in the finish. The backsweetening took care of this, as well as adding a nice full honey flavor to the beer. Although this won’t be possible if you’re bottle conditioning.
As mentioned in the previous note, I believe I had a little too much heather in the recipe. What I have posted above has already been adjusted to reduce it. When I brew this again, I will follow the recipe posted above.
Heather tips can pretty much be found at any homebrewing supplier at this point. Some of the other things (like mugwort) can be harder to locate. I usually get heather tips this kind of stuff here: https://wildweeds.com/.
Possibly. The intent was more about creating different layers of sweetness. This beer is supposed to be a little on the sweeter side.
I can’t find my notes at the moment, but I’m pretty sure the regular recipe for heather tea I’ve been using is 2 oz of heather tips, .5 oz of meadowsweet, and .5 oz of mugwort steeped in water at 170-180° for 7 minutes. Strain and stir in 10 oz of honey. 1 gallon batch size. It’s definitely not a flavor for everyone, but I like it and have been trying to create a good “beer version”.
The recipe I posted definitely has room for adjustment and improvement, but I like the direction it’s going.
I surely appreciate you taking the time to share and I’ll let you know when I start it, very excited. I’m currently brewing one of each beer from brewing classic styles. So I’m doing s classic beer then an experimental batch so switching it up every other brew.
No problem at all. I look forward to hearing how things go.
And one more quick note, when using heather tips, definitely put them in some kind of mesh or straining bag. Otherwise you’ll have little bits of plant material that gets everywhere and sticks to everything. Some of it sinks, some floats. It’s a pretty big mess. You may have used a bag anyway, just wanted to mention it though.