Say yarrow, wave goodbye

I've talked before about non-hopped beer and I'm trying another variant - a yarrow and sweet orange beer. Yarrow is a much-loved traditional herb from the Northern hemisphere and is used for anything from stemming bleeding wounds to curing hemorrhoids. It also has a sweet but slightly bitter flavour so it can be used as a flavouring agent for beer. It was an integral part of gruit, the medieval pre-hopped version of beer, and is considered to have psychoactive tendencies, similar to wormwood. I'm missing the other two key ingredients of gruit - marsh rosemary & bog myrtle - but I managed to get some dried yarrow so thought I'd give it a go.

The standard pre-brew 'ingredients' picture

This was -

• 1kg cracked traditional grain, 1kg cracked pilsner grain, 1kg cracked maris otter grain (not because of any flavour profiling, it was just what was available in my LHBS)
• 300g light crystal grain
• 2 1/2kg pale malt extract
• 1/2 kg dark pale malt extract
• 60g dried yarrow
• 35g dried sweet orange

Mash the grains with 20g yarrow, 15g sweet orange, pith of half a lemon and 1 teaspoonful of coriander seeds for 1hr at 66 degrees C

Meanwhile boil up 40g of yarrow for an hour. With 15 minutes to go add 20g sweet orange peel, 1 tablespoon of coriander seeds and the pith of half a lemon. 

Ignore the cries from German beer enthusiasts :)

 

At the end of the hour add the wort from the mash to the boil pan and dissolve in the dried malt extract. Take off the boil and cool for an hour or so before making up to 25l with filtered water. Add Belgian ale yeast for some fruity esters.

I've had this fermenting in the primary for two weeks and racked it to secondaries today. It's sweet and light, so I'm curious to see how it turns out.

I also bottled my Rack Sheep, which has been in secondaries for 3 weeks and fermenting for 5. After prepping 25 bottles I dug out the secondaries and noticed that it was still bubbling. We've had a hot spell (35 degrees today!) and I think the yeast has rejuvenated itself so I would have liked to have left it in for a little while longer, but with limited space I have a 'just in time' bottling schedule and I didn't fancy re-cleaning all those bottles a week or two later so decided to bottle it as is. That one may be a bit lively when it's opened.....