KW Homestead

Pasture Raised Poultry & Edible Landscaping Plants Since 2013

Tag: brewing

Hickory Leaf Session Beer

May 19, 2015 / / Comments Off on Hickory Leaf Session Beer

 After a quick fermentation, my hickory leaf gruit, while still young, was ready for some tasting.

All in all, it’s not bad. Very drinkable, refreshing, and a definetly not overpowered by the hickory leaves that were used in place of hops. I’d say that the 5 ounces of fresh leaves were just enough to balance out the malt sweetness without imparting too much bitterness or off flavor. They let the yeast favors come through, some subtle fruitiness, a mix between Apple and apricot maybe.

 

hickor y leaves beer

hickory leaf session gruit brewed without hops

 
Now that I know that you can indeed produce beer from hickory leaves, I want to try pushing the envelope a bit further and see if I can brew a hickory leaf IPA with no hops. I may start off trying 1 pound of dried leaves, just to see if I can find the upper limit. 

The leaves on their own are not unpleasant, and have a grassy, meadowy, slightly tannic taste. I’m excited to see how this one ages, and equally excited to know that at least for simpler beer styles without a lot of hop character, hickory leaves are a fine bettering substitute for the homebrewer.

 

What’s Fermenting at Kuska Wiñasun Homestead?

May 12, 2015 / / Comments Off on What’s Fermenting at Kuska Wiñasun Homestead?

Beer!

But not your typical ale. This experimental concoction is relatively straightforward, save for one tiny detail. There are no hops in it.

hickory leaves beer

Amber ale with hickory leaves

Gasp! That’s beer blasphemy! Off with his head!

Hold on, lets talk this through. Now while I enjoy hops, IPAs, pale ales, and Double Dry Hopped Double IPAs  as much as the next craft beer enthusiast, they are not the only game in town. Hops are a relatively new innovation on the brewing scene, really coming into prominence in the last  500 years or so. Before that, brewers, brewsters, and alewives used different combinations of herbs and spices to bitter and balance their beer.

These “Gruits”, or herbal beers, relied on plants such as yarrow, bog myrtle, mugwort, wormwood, rue, rosemary, and heather to balance out the sweetness of fermented malt beverages. The history of gruit is a fascinating one that involves propaganda, the Protestant Reformation, and secret and sacred recipes that were passed down for generations.

While these herbs have a long history of being used in brewing, I chose a different avenue for my beer. Hickory leaves.

hickory leaves bittering homebrew

Fresh hickory leaves ready for the brewpot

I got the idea from Scratch Brewing, a small experimental brewery in IL that frequently uses foraged and locally farmed ingredients in their brew-house. They brewed up a few batches that used hickory leaves in place of hops for bittering. Seeing as how we have plenty of hickory trees here, and no hop vines yet, I thought it would be cool to experiment with them in a small batch of homebrew.

hickory leaf beer

Hops are just 1 of many plants that can be used in brewing

I ended up adding 5 oz. of whole, freshly picked hickory leaves to my 5 gallon batch. Green hickory leaves have a not unpleasant taste to them. They are slightly astringent, but clean tasting and “green.” We’ll see how this one turns out.

One note of importance: Hops are an excellent preservative in beer, so this beer won’t be able to be aged for any length time and will have to be drunk relatively quickly. I guess I can live with that.

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