Now turning my attention to beers and the kinds of beers that can be made, I have become interested in historical beers. So starting with what is at least in part a gruit ale, I will try my fermentation vessels at a Yarrow Ale.
Available Recipes
There are four that I noted when searching:
I did some analysis on the amount of yarrow they all use in an attempt to get a feel for how much I should aim for. My research showed something that surprised me:
I found that Andy Hamilton's recipe used about three times the amount of Yarrow when compared to the other recipes. I asked him about this and it turns out he used leaf, stalk and flower which accounts for the large Yarrow amount. I have decided to divide that amount by about 3 using just leafs and flowers.
Sunday 16th September 2012
Decided to give this one a go this evening, as I had been collecting Yarrow from the route home from work.
I manged to collect mostly leaves, some flower heads and a small handful of mugwort as well. I was keen to keep the mugwort content low as it can be quite a bitter herb and didn't want to throw off the recipe too much.
Recipe
- 500g Medium dry malt extract
- 50g Yarrow/Mugwort herbs
- 1/2 sachet of Young Ale Yeast
- 4.5l spring water
For the herbs I decided to boil half at the start of the boil and half just before the end. The first half will provide the bittering and the second half will provide the aroma. This means boil times 30 mins and 5 mins respectively. For the later herbs I selected mostly the flowers as should contain most of the aroma and less bittering.
In my case I did the boil with two pots because I didn't have a single pot large enough.
- Add malt to both pots
- Bring to the boil, monitoring it closely for boil over and adjusting carefully
- Add half the herbs between both pots
- Stir and boil
- At 5 minutes remaining and the second half
- Once the boil was complete, cool the pots in a cold sink of water
- Pour over a sieve and remove the herbs
- Pour into the demijohn
- Top up with any further water to bring the batch to 4.5l
- Shake to airate
- Pitch yeast
Original Gravity: 1.036
Taste of the wort was sweet and malty, with a bitter after taste and Yarrow aroma. So far so good.
17th September 2012
Fermentation started over night and the air lock was popping this morning. By this evening it had developed an orderly fizz.
20th September 2012
Fermentation has now finished, there is a few bubbles rising from the bottom, but generally the airlock is showing little activity. I'll give it another week and a half to condition before racking.
28th September's 2012
Had a chance to rack the ale this evening.
Final Gravity: 1.010
The ale is not all that strong which feels appropriate. However the taste is very mild. The main flavour is the fermented malt. The Yarrow is far too weak and not distinctive enough. There is a bitter hint but again is too weak.
I suspect what has happened here is that I have not put enough Yarrow in. Andy Hamiltons recipe we can be certain uses freshly harvested Yarrow. If we assume that the other recipes in my research all use dried Yarrow then that would be a problem.
Fresh herbs are less potent than dried herbs so I suspect I should have matched Andy's ratio and upped my herbs by a factor of three.
So I'll give the ale another week to get and see if anything else happens with the flavour otherwise I'll start again with larger quantities of herbs.
