Autumn/winter Beer?

[Matthew.Passmore]

I have just set off a batch of Elderberry wine and would now like to make some beer....

with the nettles now old and woody what else can be used for making beer?

anyone have any recipes?

Cheers,
Matt.

[locum76]

rowan berries can be used as a bittering agent in beer, they're still on the bush up here.

[Matthew.Passmore]

cheers, there is a couple of Hop Vines growing near me, the part I'm struggling with is what to use as the main "Body" of the beer i.e. barley but I don't want to buy anything really.

I know that potatoes can be used to produce a nice wine, would they be good for beer?

[trail2]

Google Spruce/Small beer. That should give you a heads up.
JWR.

[Cyclingrelf]

There are recipes for Burdock beer, Dandelion and Burdock beer (both roots) and Blackberry ale in Roger Philips Wild food. Add to that Heather ale (the flowers) in Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls A cook on the wild side.

[slowworm]

So you're after natural sugars to ferment? You mention potato wine but the recipes I have for that use sugar and the blackberry ale recipe mentioned is based on barley malt.

Natural sugars that spring to mind would be apple juice, honey and even sugar beets if you can get hold of some. However, I'm not sure I fancy hopped cider or mead.

I make a fair bit of beer, just harvested enough hops for about 100 pints, and if you buy malt in reasonable quantities then it works out about 15p a pint, which isn't bad IMHO.

You could try growing your own barley and malting it yourself in future.

[nicodiemus]

www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk

Brewing forum. I know several of us on here are all grain brewers and have at various stages frequented it.

In short, birch sap can be used to make beer, and there's no reason you couldn't bitter it with rowan, nettles, or various other bushcrafty things.

You can liberate sugars from potato mash, but you need an enzyme to do the work. You can't generally buy the enzymes in sufficient quantities to do good.

Other than birch sap, i can't think of anything else you could easily use to make decent beer. Make sure you get some nice brewer's yeast though, don't be tempted to use baker's yeast!

[gregorach]

If it's not made from malted grains, it not beer. I dunno what it should be called, but it's not beer.

If you're using green malt to convert the starch in potatoes, you're half-way to making potcheen (http://potcheen.urbanup.com/1746077). Malting your own grain is one thing, but kilning that malt for brewing beer is a very tricky business indeed, and not really something that can be done in a domestic setting.

Hie thee to a maltsters, or your local homebrew shop. It's not like malt is particularly expensive - mine works out about a pound a kilo.