Making Nettle Beer

Last week we made Dandelion and Burdock beer, and thats bottled, and maturing for a week before we guzzle it.

These basic brews dont take long to make, most of them from the first processes to drinking take as little as just 10 days.

Well whilst the Dandelion and Burdock was maturing in its bottles I thought it time to start on the next brew. This involved taking Phillipa on an exciting mission into the countryside to find some fresh young nettles. After driving for around 20 minutes we found the perfect spot, and with a gardening glove each and a carier bag we started gethering the nettles.

The best flavour comes from the top bunch of leaves, as these are generally the youngest. You can use the whole plant, but a huge range of insects use the nettle plant, so its best to only take at most the top 4 sets of leaves so that you dont disturb the habitat to much. We mainly picked the top 2 sets, as these we by far the newest, and will hopefully give the best flavour.

We needed 2lb of nettle tops for this brew, and as a rule of thumb, a well stuffed carrier bag weighs in at about a pound. With one filled each, and only a few stings later we tied the bags up and headed home.

For our Nettle beer we needed the following.

2lb Nettles

8 Pints of water

1lb Demerara Sugar

2 Lemons

1oz Cream of Tartar

2 tsp ground ginger

Yeast

8 pint of water was added to a large cooking vestle, and the nettles added. This was brought to the boil, and the nettles stirred and mashed through out the process to try to extract as much flavour as possible. They were boiled for about 20 minutes.

Here the nettles are cooling down ready to be strained

I mashed the nettles in a collander to get as much juice from them

Whilst the liquid was cooling I weighed out the ingredients. I also grated the zest from the 2 lemons, and then juiced them.

When the liquid was cool enough it was passed through the collandar into another pan to remove any leaves that were still in the mixture.


The liquid was then sieved into a freshly steralised fermentation bucket. You need to be 100% sure that everything is sterile. Any baddies could stop your yeast from fermenting your brew, and you dont want that.

The sugar was added along with the lemon zest and juice


Measure out your ginger, and add 2 tea spoons

Insert silly picture :)

Weigh out and add the Cream of Tartar

Relax for a while with a fine drop of Whiskey

Stir, and stir and stir until all of the sugar has disolved

Meanwhile, the easter bunnys look on, wondering quite what I am up to..!

When the liquid has cooled down you need to add the yeast. I use a strong wine yeast, and 1 heaped teaspoon of this is added per gallon of liquid. I add this to a mug of warm water, and stir it in. This is then added to the fermentation bucket, and a clean tea towel laid over the top.

I wrap a heat belt around the bottom of the bin to keep the liquid at a constant tempreture, and this will be left to ferment for 3 days before it is syphoned off into bottles.

The nettle mulch that was left looks like this, and I ate about 3 mouth fulls of it. It tasted like over boiled spinach. Phillipa declined the offer of some claiming that she had just cleaned her teeth.

The bottling process will be up soon, as hopefully will be a review of the Dandelion and Burdock beer.