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Nettle ale

Started by tipp brewer, April 07, 2020, 08:08:50 PM

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tipp brewer

Hi everybody, not sure if this is the right place for this as looking for advice/suggestions rather than posting a recipe.
I ve been away from the brewing for a good bit but seem to have a bit of extra time on my hands for the past week or two 
Anyway looking to do a nettle beer, found some just out of date uncrushed pale malt and wheat malt  so thinking of 3 kg pale malt, 1 kg wheat malt and I know I have some east Kent holdings in my freezer, again it's there about a year so I might throw in 60 grammes for bittering and then hoping to use nettles (maybe alongside some simcoe, as that's also in the freezer, 30 grammes at 10 minutes) I d hope to add nettles at 10 minutes and at flame out (I presume adding them at flameout will be enough to kill any nasties left after a good rinse).
Anybody use nettles before, as they ll be fresh do I need 4 times the amount I.e replacing 30 grammes of dried hops with 120 grammes of nettles. Anyone ever try this. I know Brett Dundee did a lovely nettle beer, so i want most of the flavour to come from the nettles.
I ll surely find enough nettles within  2 km of my house.
I actually have a dipa in fermentor at the moment and am just going to use a ladle of slurry from the bottom as the yeast, the yeast was bry97 which surprisingly took off within 12 hours of pitching.

LordEoin

For nettle ale you need about a kilo of new nettle tops per gallon.
You dont want to just kill nasties, you should boil the hell out of them for 15minutes+
I wouldn't go too heavy on the bittering or spoil the nettles with simcoe.
You'll be amazed at the colour of the stuff at various points throughout the brewing, fermenting, and conditioning.

But seeing as the other ingredients are out of date grain + year old hops + a ladle of slurry, I wouldn't set my hopes too high, regardless of how you treat the nettles.

Be sure to pick extra nettles for nettle soup . It's really good and super nutritious.

tipp brewer

Thanks lord eoin, that s a hell of a lot of nettles, think I might do a normal empty your freezer 5kg brew and a trial 1 gallon of nettle ale as I don't think I have the patience to pick 5 kg of nettles, 1 kg might be doable. I might try the nettle soup, I did some wild leek soup and wild leek pesto this week and am still alive so I ll keep the adventures going.