Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

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Operator

Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by Operator » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:16 pm

Hello all, on wednesday I knocked up 12 litres of nettle beer using the river cottage recipe: 2 carrier bags of nettle tops, 1.5 kg of raw cane sugar, 55g cream of tartar, juice of 1 lemon and 1 orange. The OG was 1050 and I have to say, smelled pretty bad. It seems to be fermenting well but has only dropped to 1030 so far. Has anyone else had experience with this brew? I was going to ignore the recipe advice to bottle after 3 days and drink after a further 2. I thought I'd ferment it out and prime when bottling. Any advice?


Cheers

lollypopp

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by lollypopp » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:27 pm

Being a newb, can't help, but would love to know where to get that recipe? :D

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edit1now
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Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by edit1now » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:31 pm

On Channel 4's website.

lollypopp

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by lollypopp » Sun Apr 12, 2009 10:41 pm

Cheers edit1now =P~

Operator

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by Operator » Sun Apr 12, 2009 11:38 pm

On the website it says to use 1 carrier bag of nettle tops, didn't look enough to me so I doubled it!

urbantreemonkey

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by urbantreemonkey » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:27 pm

I'm brewing a nettle beer and mine smells funky as well! :shock:
I got my recipe here..http://www.selfsufficientish.com/strongernettlebeer.htm
Im doing the less strong version and a smaller batch 20 pints.
I'm hoping it turns out okay, not holding my breath tho [-o<

DREADSKIN

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by DREADSKIN » Mon Apr 13, 2009 6:49 pm

keep us posted ladz, i was hoping to do this one next! then hopefully the elderflowers will be out soon.

anyone made wine outta dandilions flower heads? dad said his grandad used to get him to fill buckets of the wee flowers to make wine. anyone else do this? whats it like?

urbantreemonkey

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by urbantreemonkey » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:13 pm

I'm going to ignore the advice too and ferment out and then bottle.
If i bottles it now i think they would be bottle bombs! Still really murky ( i used bread yeast , dont know if thats the reason) and bubbling away, there is no way that mine would be ready to drink next week :shock:

shandypants5

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by shandypants5 » Mon Apr 13, 2009 7:25 pm

This looks fun, I might make a batch of this myself.( cant taste any worse than my Muntons kits are turning out :) )

It does seem a bit too fast though, are they saying its a sweet low alc beer.

If we let it ferment out properly and clear will it still taste ok?

Operator

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by Operator » Mon Apr 13, 2009 9:12 pm

A mate of mine who used to do loads of hedgerow brews said nettle always turned out good. I'm trying to keep an open mind. I used a spare ale yeast for mine. I'm going to do another hydro reading tomorrow. I'll post how it's going.

Operator

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by Operator » Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:07 pm

Checked it today and it's still 1030. I gave it a stir two days ago. Is this normal? I would assume that 1.5kg of sugar would provide plenty of fermentables to get much lower, surely the nettle "tea" just provides flavour? Any ideas? I'm thinking of chucking some yeast nutrient in and giving it another stir. Maybe it's supposed to be "sweet and low" like shandypant said.

Operator

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by Operator » Tue Apr 14, 2009 8:16 pm

Cheers Chris, I've got some cider yeast and some champagne yeast in the cupboard, I might try one of those. The strange thing is all the recipes use bread or beer yeast.

mattmacleod

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by mattmacleod » Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:38 am

Chris-x1 wrote:Any brewers yeast (wine/champagne/cider/beer yeast) will be better that bread yeast.
I don't necessarily agree with this. Brewer's yeast is great for fermenting brewer's wort, but this is not what we're dealing with here. The make-up of the nettle beer is going to be mostly simple sugar and contains none of the other substances the yeast would "expect" to find. I would actually expect bread yeast to be absolutely perfect for fermenting out the nettle beer.

Operator

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by Operator » Wed Apr 15, 2009 11:39 am

Thanks Chris. I chucked some cider yeast in last night along with a 1/2 tsp yeast vit. Unfortunatley I was in a rush do didn't rehydrate it first. If it still won't get going I've got some more and I'll do it properly this time. It smells much better now though. This morning it seemed to have started fermenting again.

urbantreemonkey

Re: Nettle beer, river cottage recipe.

Post by urbantreemonkey » Wed Apr 15, 2009 6:11 pm

Okay here is a little update on my nettle beer, The fermenting has slowed down now so i took a measurement and its reading 1010 from 1046og.
Going to leave it a bit longer then bottle, its also not smelling as bad either. :)

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