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Ethnobotanical Beer

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I'm a few weeks away from buying a home-brew kit. I'm wondering what else can be brewed in beer to give it a distinct ethno feel.

I'm talking legally, and hypothetically here.

I'll be brewing a few different types, but the first type will probably be an ale or stout, as I'll just miss summer by the time i set everything up and a brew is ready. So I'll want my 'winter' beer to be warming, and relaxing. Something I could kick back with on a cold night.

EDIT-What dissolves in alcohol?

Edited by Azz301

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If you do a search for the thread Henbane pilsener you will discover not only a recipe for Henbane pilsener but a bunch of info on ethno beers a few of us have tried making.

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my late brother would often add one nice mj bud into the homebrew at the botteling stage,

awsome nice and bitter taste. none (so the story goes) of the mj beers ever got infected, even after long storage!!! the bud after having spend weeks or months in the bottle, than gets dried out can can still be smoked! be generous, use at least a thumb size bud for each 0,5l bottle.

this hemp beer tastes awsome, but it's not for people who like ther beer to taste like lemonade...

maybe poppy beer would turn out alright, where ever legal to do so,

but i guess it would taste horrid, lol.

heimia or calea, but again the taste might be too much to handle, unless you just add a bit.

yeah lets read up on that link again, as proly it was all said already.

edit: http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...enbane+pilsener

Edited by planthelper

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Sounds great planthelper ;) Might give that one a go!

Blue Lotus is another one worth putting some effort into ;)

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i am making red wine at the moment. I reckon with enough added sugar and a mother load of blue lotus i could make a kickass white muscat

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Quote from planthelper, maybe poppy beer would turn out alright, where ever legal to do so,

but i guess it would taste horrid, lol.[/b]

Thats Correct :puke::wink:

Imagine boiling down 4 kilo of pea pods

and reducing to a crude resin extract.

Then making a cup of tea with this and a gob of marmite....

And you will be close enough to enjoying the experience

of Poppy Beer for real :P:puke:

Edited by DreamingNagual

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I realize this is a somewhat old topic, but with current preoccupations, well.... it came up.

SNIP.....

Also, one could, where legal, do the same with a mitragyna sp./nymphaea brew. Again, I believe the chai would fuse nicely with the bitterness and malt, making a palatable brew. This one will be attempted by yours truly when I acquire the funds for the materials as it is perfectly legal here. I would, of course, advise against it out there in oz :wink:

Edit: anyone ever made a fermented chai brew? Recipes would be welcome as I found very little on sundry beer forums.

Edited by FM.

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G'day,this is my first post, hope it works.

Try horehound for your bittering agent. I brewed a horehound beer some years ago, and it was delicious. Only problem was one schooner glass laid me down flat. When I awoke in front of the dieing fire and tried to take myself to bed, I couldn't move so I just dozed off again. After that I just had small glasses of it when I felt a cold or cough coming on. Marrubium vulgare is the bot. name, pretty common, declared weed in some states. Supposedly a weak sedative-I reckon it's pretty strong. I've lost my recipe, but you could improvise, and I'm sure there are plenty of recipes out there, as it was once a popular beer. Also worth tring are Yarrow, Sage, Mugwort and Mexican Tarragon Beers. The small 4L glass demijohns are the go. I used to make a strong tea out of the herb I was using, and add this to the malt etc. Another great beer is coriander and lime pilsner.

Happy Brewing

  • Like 1

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If the taste is the be all n end all, stick to herbs n spices fruits etc that you would tend to eat or drink anyway... sticking a horrible tasting unfamiliar thing in an otherwise decent brew will not taste too good on the first few gos...but... most of us thought beer was rank as a kid right? Now wave some fresh cold malt n hops under our noses :drool2: as it's an associated thing..smell and taste go straight to your memory, no stops at reason along the way. So maybe after a decent run of poppy ale, it might just grow on ya! or it might end up turning you into some crazed impressionist artiste, hard to say in advance haha.

There are heaps of recipes for flower n fruit wines and beers around, hunt up a book called "101 new fruit n wine recipes" or similar, bucketloads (mugloads?) of great stuff...and a lot of them would have some kind of other effect if you upped the rates of herbage. Horehound as suggested wsa used in beers etc for a long time, but apparently its especially bad for your liver in presence of alcohol (course, a few glasses a week for a couple months probably wont make you too crook). Coltsfoot, broom, jasmine, chamomile, juniper, cinnamon, anise, nutmeg, various sages and mints, mushrooms, MJ, and suspicious looking grains have all been added to things over time... I'd probably stick to making a poppy tincture with spirits though, cant imagine that tasting any good at all in a beer...but mail me a sample and I'll make an informed decision :lol:

Hang on I'll get the book... bloody drunks and their demands :P

Almond

Angelica

Birch

Broom

Carnation

Caraway

Chamomile

Cherry

Clary sage

coffee

coltsfoot

elder

elecampagne

Fennel

ginger

Golden Rod

Lavendar

Parsley

Rosemary

Sarsparillia

Sassafrass

yarrow

all from the olde english style country winemaking book I have, so I'm sure if ya can do it with wine you can fiddle a bit for beer. Of course, the beer might come out tasting like pot pourii or mouthwash, but thats the fun of experimentation!

Other things that occur to me are lions tail, galangal, star anise, brug n dhatura (feeling lucky punk? :P maybe the magic out of a scop patch or some travacalm, lil more reliable), saffron, anything fulla saffrol while we're already beating our livers with a stick, wormwood and the usual sleepy herbs, valerian, vervain, skullcap, that aussie vervain stuff might be interesting but would have that saponin - glyco edge like a lot of things (but its cheap, hit the trainlines). Passionflower, mugwort, damiana, all would have some merits. Of course you might be happier just making a Good Beer to have on hand, and make teas from all these things. Whatever you add you have to make sure there is enough of SOMETHING, thymol etc, heattreatment whatever, to kill the buggies that will be living on the plant matter esp if wildcrafted. And take decent notes on what you do, many many fine brews are lost to the fog of time and braincell genocide! :lol: Might be an idea to aim for a tincture added to a brew, not that it wont xtract ok in the tun (all that co2 and acid running around in there) but a lot of plants if left even a touch too long in a brew leave a grass clipping - swamp gas kinda edge.

There really are no limits bar legality and taste buds, and the level of regret you can live with haha.

make mine a Rivea Refresher with a Syrian twist, barkeep!

GD

edity bit... best fermenters I found price - v stability, sealing ability etc is those 10 or 20l white plastic handy buckets from Bunning$...about 8 bucks usually, you can make a decent whack of stuff in it (easier to keep temps static with a bit of bulk), easy to bore out the top of an extra lid to take a bung - airlock - bubble hose, and a piece of piss to clean out... the glass demis are great (anything looks tasty in one of those, that bluegreen glass mmmm) but unless you are a cleaning nazi they'll fog up with remnant hazes etc that are a bit tricky to clean out sometimes.Sand, bottlebrushes, chains and shitloads of hot water and bleach all get used, to varying effects.Also clear glass isn't the best thing with some wines, light buggers the colouring. The buckets have a nice even pouring flow though, makes racking a bit easier for me anyway.But those demis make great presenters for those bulk hillbilly wines, perfect amount to destroy a roomfull of people haha.

Edited by greendreams

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welcome to the forums, worowa!

nice post about the marrubium vulgare, it sort of has the looks of a good ethno plant...

if one is mixing a lot of stuff, just be carefull and research all synergies and contraindications.

just throwing different stuff together, might reveal pleasant surprises, but aswell might pose various dangers.

if for example one would like to potentiate the effects of poppy with saffron, the dangers of overdosing will increase aswell accordingly.

i have never tried, having a cup of passionflower tea (or just a tiny amount of rue) and than chewing some qat, or other uppers, or whatever..... maybe rue will not potentiate qat, i don't know, but my feelings are it could.

as a shaman, you have intuitive ideas, and often your successrate is enormous, but don't go overboard, alway take it cool and experiment with a sound mind and not with an oh i'm so excited, i want more mind.

strong mao inhibitation (or mixing stuff in generall) and than a massive drug binch, could lead to unwanted effects in some cases.

remeber the fist time you smoked substanial pot, after you got pissed as a nude?

Edited by planthelper

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meant to say earlier that broom is often listed as a booze additive, and is meant to have some hypnotic qualities, but apparently its pretty good at messing with your heart over certain amounts.

happy brewing

GD

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Greendreams, you and I should hang out :lol: Talk about synergy :shroomer: Also, if you pay the postage, we may just work that out...

planthelper, those are words of wisdom that cannot be overspoken. I think even the best of us have ourscars from this sport....SNIP....:wink: Now, the words of warning are all too wise, but her logic went as follows...Saffron roughly triples the potency of said material according to informal assays. This could allow far less material to be added with the same efficacy, possibly preserving drinkability. "You're only allowed one of these beers!" Whatcha think? :scratchhead:

Edited by FM.

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haha, might be a plan eh? Never heard of the saffron and pop issue before, interesting stuff... how does it work? does it actually get you more fucked or does it just FEEL that you ar emore fucked, as surely given a set amount of opiate to work with in the first place , only so much morph can be made... or does it mess with the conversion in livero? (haha).

I stick to codeine, cheap n legal, for my back. Trying to have fun with things like that in the past just left me too overtired to sleep, an inverted insomnia...itchy, backed up and more prone to injuring myself :lol:

Amazing what happens , you add A to B and get CCDBA somehow... but as was said... the green freaks intuition is a powerful thing, as long as it is true intuition and not just blind hope. Lot of people still end up just that leeeetle bit different to how they would've been though... where you end up depends a lot on where you started from.

I find the trick for a lot of people with alco in combination is to get all your greenery dealt with FIRST... then have the odd refresher.. but starting from a baseline of crissed as a picket and then throwing some spin into the mix... can be terrible.

have a safe happy hour, for gods sake noone go driving around,

GD

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greendreams, if you want more info on that interaction, head over to entheogen.com. Brujo de Colonia posted an experience reporting potency of ope-tea being doubled or tripled by adding saffron. He nearly had some health problems :( due to this mix. Think cardio-respiratory depression problems-very bad... Not sure why this occurs, but my instincts tell me its a dopamine thing. I did some bioassays with mitragyna sp. and saffron without complications or synergy (just additive effects,) so it's probably not associated with opiate receptors in general. Also, the serotonin system seems unlikely, so my logic points generally toward dopamine. Of course, we know very little about saffrons pharmacology at this point, so....

I believe Paracelcus said it best, "The difference between a medicine and a poison is the dose."

Note: To the best of my knowledge, all laudanum recipes from the past contained saffron as an ingredient.

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snip

Edited by FM.

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Just ordered some new ethnobotanicals (hooray!) including 125 g Nymphaea caerulea plumules, 25 g Mandrake root, as well as various others for my next root beer batch etc. I've not tried to even make tea from the blue lilly before, but it sounds as though it may make a nice floral bittering agent for an ethnobeer. 100 grams are reserved for this purpose after experimentation. I got the mandrake on a whim because it was cheap and the combo with Nymphaea would be something of an Egyptian theme. Does anyone have any experience with appropriate dose for this plant? I'm looking for synergy with the blue lilly, but with minimal side effects...Recommendations are desperately needed as info on safe use of this plant is severely lacking.

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Have only recently started brewing at home and think adding some of my favorite herbs would be a great way to personalise my brews.

Can someone answer this:

What is the way to add herbs...do you add it straight to the fermenter or make some sort of tea bag?

If herbs are added straight to fermenter would that be bad for my batch?

Herbs up for consideration at this point are Mugwort and Damiana...maybe Blue Lotus.

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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 :wink: 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.

Edited by Lachy

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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. 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.

This makes sense. My latest batch that is currently in the final stages was the first in which I used additional Hops (Cluster Hops in this case). It came in teabag form with the instruction of 10 minutes in boiling water before adding...possibly to kill bacteria and wild yeasts as you say. The herbs I add will be minimal for the first batch. Mugwort I've heard was the Beer herb of choice before Hops became most common, I enjoy this herb in tea as I do Damiana. I'm told Blue Lotus works well with alcohol. I might make a teabag infusion or boil and throw the herbs in directly.

I am looking forward to try this brew and also try and make a Blonde beer in the style of Hoegaarden. Apparently Coriander and orange zest is added to the mix in addition to the regular steps.

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...with the instruction of 10 minutes in boiling water before adding...possibly to kill bacteria and wild yeasts as you say.

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.

I am looking forward to try this brew and also try and make a Blonde beer in the style of Hoegaarden. Apparently Coriander and orange zest is added to the mix in addition to the regular steps.

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. :)

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a lot of those coriander / orange notes really just come from the yeast and controlled temperatures...don't know about hoegaarden specifically, but have heard a few interviews with brewers who mention similar belgian beers but note that there are no such adjuncts

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a lot of those coriander / orange notes really just come from the yeast and controlled temperatures

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. :drool2:

don't know about hoegaarden specifically, but have heard a few interviews with brewers who mention similar belgian beers but note that there are no such adjuncts

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. :wink:

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yep...just meant that there is often a lot of speculation about adjuncts when eventually it is realised that there are none (though not all beers...grains of paradise is another one that can be hidden away in layers of subtlety)...just the yeast & hops as you say..i think the liquid cultures are a different beast really....that's what i'm referring to.

Edited by coin

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Be very careful when adding herbs to the fermenter. Plant surfaces are covered with Lactobacillus sp. and other bacteria which would love to live in your beer and make it pretty yucky tasting :puke: I like to sanitize mine with vodka first before tossing them in if I'm looking for a no-heat process. This helps preserve volatile smells and sensitive compounds :wink:

You may have seen this thread, but I just updated it. Blue lotus is very nice in beer!

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Wouldnt boiling the herbs sufficiently kill the bacteria? Or do you mean by using the vodka method you can preserve the Blue Lotus compounds?

This brewing idea of adding ethno herbs has got me interested in Blue Lotus again...had some ages ago, never bought any more.

I look forward to giving this a go.

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