Thoughts: This is by far one of my favorite wacky historical brews so far. What a powerhouse of flavors, and THAT COLOR! As the brew started to ferment, it tasted smelled healthy and earthy, like beets fresh-pulled from the ground, and apples fallen from the tree. I would recommend just that juice, if the finished…
Author: Needs Mead
Apple Beer SG – Maple Oatmeal Scones
Thoughts: Dense, lightly spiced, and a little too easy to eat, these might be my favorite use yet of spent grain. They’re hearty, but the spent grain doesn’t overwhelm the scone, giving it instead a rustic, country-cottage feel. They’re much heftier than my usual batch of currant scones, so I might continue to try and…
Apple Beer Barley Pudding
Thoughts: This is a rustic, cottage sort of a pudding, but the whiskey whipped cream elevates it up and beyond ordinary tastiness. The spent grains from the apple beer give the pudding some husky body, but the regular barley helps keep the texture from being too rough. The cloud of boozy whipped cream adds yet…
Apple Beer Trub Bread
“Trub” is the name for that yeasty sludge left in the bottom of a carboy after the beer has been racked out. With many beers, the trub will absorb the bitterness from the hops, leaving an unpleasant set of flavors to work with. With the apple beer, however, there’s so little of the hops used…
Colonial Apple Beer
Thoughts: The basic idea of this beer is that it uses apple cider instead of water in the wort. It ended up quirky, in that at least half the fermenting beer was sediment in the jug. I ended up making a great bread from that sediment, and a variety of other recipes from the spent…
Raspberry Cordial
Thoughts: I was delighted to find this recipe, which dates back to 1717, in The Accomplished Housekeeper. I made a batch, and after a few months was terribly disappointed to find it harsh and not at all pleasant to drink. Dejected, I put the bottle away, and wrote it off as a failure. Happily, I recently…
Greywater Watch Gruit
Thoughts: When I heard about gruit, a historical hopless ale, I knew I wanted to try it. And then, the more I learned about it, the cooler it became. Gruit waned in use as the popularity of hops grew throughout the Middle Ages, but has enjoyed somewhat of a revival as a result of the…
Ginger Wine, round 1
Thoughts: The color is nearly clear, crystaline by homebrewed fruit wine standards, with just the slightest tint of yellow-green. It has a sort of sharp acidity on the first taste, followed by a bit of ginger flavor. I couldn’t quite pin the oddly familiar set of flavors, but then it hit me. It tastes like…
Last Hearth Heather Ale
In our world, heather ale (or Fraoch, the gaelic word for “heather”) was enjoyed by the ancient Picts in what is now Scotland. With various conquests and later laws, the original recipes for Fraoch were lost. As the legend goes, the Pictish king, when taken captive, leapt from a cliff rather than share the secret of…
Elderberry-Lemon Shortbread
What an awesome use for the elderberries left over from the cordial recipe. The lemon provides a good counterpoint to the elderberry flavors, and the brown sugar sweetens it just to the point of being delicious, without the risk of being too sweet. Because the cordial is ready to drink as soon as the berries…
Dried Elderberry Cordial
To help augment the posts that rely on fermentation (much slowed by the chilly temperatures in my apartment), I’ve started some cordials and infusions to see me through the winter and into spring, and the first to be ready is this elderberry cordial. I think I probably first stumbled onto the concept of…
Maple Cider
Thoughts: I know, I know, natural fermentation is a dicey proposition, and unpredictable at best. But this recipe is very simple, with Amazing results. The flavors are rich and complex, moving from residual maple sweetness to the sour tang of the apples. Appearance-wise, it’s a nice sort of rusty color, darker than normal cider on account…
Game of Brews 