Lachy

As a bit of an aside, I've found a couple of Aussie-made beers that are incorporating native plants as adjuncts in their manufacture. Both are made by Barons Brewing in NSW, and are made under their "Native Range" label. Black Wattle Original Ale is obviously made with roasted black wattle seed. It's got a toasty, almost rye-like flavour. Quite tasty, slightly tarry, and definitely worth trying. Lemon Myrtle Witbier is a wheat beer; it's got a definite lemon note and is slightly perfume-y in the finish. It's not bad at all, and is rather easy to drink, although I thought it a little bit soft in the end. Whilst neither of these beers is "active" in the entheogen sense, I reckon they give homebrewers a bit of an idea of what you can do with basic recipes and then tweaking the flavour by adding some more "interesting" adjuncts.

Err... I'd think you need to keep them both warm and humid. Probably indoors, heated, and in some sort of humidity tent to boot. I can't see the outdoors doing them any favours, unfortunately. But then again, I *do* live south of Melbourne. By default our weather is hostile to many cacti.

On a more serious note, it's a pretty sad and pathetic state of affairs when a particular subculture gets singled out for mob beatings. Seriously, why would someone do that? It's stupid and thuggish violence for no reason.

Sounds great. To avoid explosions - which are caused by fermentation after bottling, thereby causing a buildup of CO2 - it's well worth investing in a gadget called a hydrometer. It measures the density of liquids and will allow you to determine when fermentation has ceased and it's safe to bottle. They're really handy for any home booze manufacture, as not only do you avoid explosive beverages, but you can also determine how alcoholic your brews are. Failing that, I know Coopers sells non-fragmenting plastic bottles for homebrewing use.

That's a fascinating paper, Undergrounder. It will undoubtedly spark some controversy (and probably some very heated debate too), but it's an interesting hypothesis nonetheless.

G'day guys, In order to speed along my pereskiopsis, I'm contemplating striking the new shoots as cuttings in some fresh potting mix, and then placing them in humidity tents (a.k.a. plastic bags) on a pad heater to provide a bit more warmth than our Melbourne weather can generate. Is this going to be too much for the peres? Is there such a thing as "too much warmth" or "too much humidity" for this uncactus-like cactus? Cheers for any and all help that you can give me.

From what I understand, the baggie method works well with germinating most cacti. The real trouble with melos in my experience is keeping them alive after that. They definitely don't like the Melbourne climate, however you may have more luck further north.

Wow...

G'day guys, During a trip to the local nursery this morning, I spotted a large clump of Leonotis nepetifolia growing as a weed in the back corner. The nurseryman - somewhat bemused, I imagine - let me wield the secateurs and I now have half a dozen cuttings. However, I have little experience cultivating anything from cuttings aside from cacti. From what I understand, this is a pretty tough plant, but if anyone has any advice about growing this baby - particularly from cuttings - I'm all ears. Do I need to strip the leaves down to a minimum until roots form? Any watering, heating, soil or other requirements I should be aware of? Cheers for your help.

Boiling will definitely kill the bugs, but could also destroy or boil off some of the "goodies" in theory. I do like the idea of soaking the herbs in vodka to kill the lactobacilli. You definitely don't want *that* in your brewski.

It sure is... Hylocereus undatus, I believe. I've got some seedlings that I grew from seeds havested from a dragonfruit that I bought from the greengrocer. It could be an easy way to grow *lots* of Hylocereus for grafting purposes.

Nice, mate. I've done ginger beer from kits before, but you really can't beat the real deal. You just have to be careful to store it in the fridge, preferably in plastic bottles to avoid having ginger-flavoured grenades.

Wow, that's quite a recipe. Please let us know how that one goes.

That's true, to an extent. You'll get fruitier flavours if you use an ale yeast at warmer temperatures due to ester production. However, if you can keep the temperature stable, the hops and other adjuncts start to play a bigger role in the flavour. A combination of Safale US-56 or US-05 ale yeast (which I think are the same thing!) and Amarillo hops, fermented in a pale ale at about 22 degrees produces a marked orange aroma consistently. Cascade hops in a lager, brewed at about 15 degrees, produce a great grapefruit tang that goes beautifully with barbequed fish. Well, I reckon it's delicious. I believe Hoegaarden uses such adjuncts, and certainly all homebrew recipes that I've seen that seek to emulate Hoegaarden certainly use these adjuncts. However, if you want to make a Belgian wheat beer, you certainly don't need to add those two adjuncts. I do Czech and German-influenced wheat beers that use Saaz or Hallertau hops respectively - no orange or coriander goes near them - and they're great drops, particularly in summer. You can also buy a huge variety of specialised liquid yeast cultures that will favour certain flavour characteristics in the finished product. However, they'll bump your costs up quite a bit. Personally, I wouldn't bother with them if were making an entheobeer, and instead I'd rely on the yeast included in the kit until I had more more experience with the flavours they imparted. However, I'm a beer geek and I brew for flavour, not the final effect. It's about the journey, not the destination for me.

Actually, that 10 minute boil is to extract flavour and a bit of aroma. You can then pitch either just the liquid or the liquid and the teabag into the fermenter. Either way, I'm sure your beer will be tasty. Yep, Hoegaarden does use coriander (root, I believe) and dried bitter orange peel. There's always an ongoing battle in homebrewing circles to try and clone Hoegaarden, with some mixed results. Personally, I like my wheat beers without coriander and orange, but that's just me. Also, if you like orange/citrus flavours in your beer, it's well worth trying either Amarillo hops for orange and Cascade for grapefruit influences. It's worked a treat in a couple of pale ales that I've done.

Either way, you want to boil your herbs briefly to eliminate any bacteria or wild yeasts that they may harbour. For simple flavouring purposes, you could just simmer your herbs in a couple of litres of water for ten minutes or so, and add the resultant broth to the fermenter prior to pitching the yeast, straining the loose vegie matter out first. However, if you want to add more of the "good stuff", you may consider just dumping the herbs into the fermenter. In this capacity, I've heard mugwort and rosemary work well. I've also considered adding bay leaves to a cider to give it a flavour boost. Certainly, there's nothing to stop you adding all sorts of adjuncts to your brews beyond the standard additional hops, grains and maybe honey. However, I'd strongly suggest boiling up the herbs you want to use first and tasting the resultant liquid, so you can be sure that you're not adding incompatible flavours. I have heard horror stories about people making bud beer and the result tasting vile. Personally, I reckon beer is nice as is. As a brewer first and foremost, I'd recommend you try different hops to see how they effect the flavour profile before you consider adding other herbs on top of things.

There's some really gorgeous plants in this thread. You guys make me rather jealous... all I've got is a lone ornatum. Having seen this thread, I might have to get a few friends to keep it company.

Cool, thanks for the advice VM. The next week's looking a bit cool, so I'll grow them on a heater until I get some decent roots happening. The look on the nurseryman's face was quizzical, to say the least. His expression was something along the lines of "what the fuck does this bloke want with our weeds?".

One of the tabloids cooked it up, IIRC. I suppose any bloke who leaves his country to retire overseas is likely to be regarded with some suspicion by the tabloid press (who aren't particularly fond of anyone doing anything a bit imaginative with their spare time anyway...)

G'day all... After lurking on the SAB forums for a few months, I've finally decided to enter the conversation. You all seem to be a bunch of cool, immensely knowledgeable folks, and I reckon I might enjoy hanging around on the boards a bit. I'm interested in many aspects of gardening... in truth, I just really enjoy hanging around nature generally. I'm a bit of a cactus-freak, trying to grow as many varieties as space will allow. I also enjoy growing culinary, medicinal and other herbs, and I brew beer as a little hobby on the side, so I'm cultivating a handful of hop plants (courtesy of SAB). Well, that's about it from me. I look forward to learning from you all and participating! Cheers - Lachy

Øskorei, those were kinda my thoughts too. Whilst listening, I thought "gee, this doesn't sound too much like Kyuss to me". I'm curious to hear your questions answered too. Whilst I'm no musician, I do love listening to music and chatting to musicians about what they "do".

I have heard the suggestion before... however, from what I understand it was thoroughly investigated and the allegations amounted to what we generally describe as "bullshit".

I've had a bit of a listen and I don't mind your acoustic stuff at all. However, I can't imagine how this material would sound as "heavy stoner rock"... so I'm actually kinda curious to see what you do with it. I'll watch this space.

I like to relax by gardening - just looking at the plants growing and blooming chills me right out. Otherwise, I love brewing beer to share with mates. There's something nice about making something that you can share with others, I guess.

Rest well sir. He was truly an author with a vision. One of the best, without a doubt.