How to Make Nettle Beer Recipe | Homestead Honey (2024)

FAQs

How to make beer with honey? ›

To carbonate a 5 gallon batch of beer with honey, you can typically replace 5 oz of priming sugar and use 1 cup of honey. Bring 16 oz of water to a boil. Add the 1 cup of honey to the boiling water and stir vigorously. Add this honey solution to the bottom of your bottling bucket, then rack your beer on top of it.

A good place to start experimenting is with one to two pounds of honey per 5-gallon batch (~0.5–1 kg/19 L) of mid-gravity beer. One pound (0.45 kg) will tend to impart a fairly subtle flavor, while two pounds (0.91 kg) will yield a much more pronounced and noticeable contribution.

To prepare nettle leaf tea, bring 10 ounces of water to a boil over a hot stove, then pour a tablespoon of fresh nettle – or a teaspoon of dried nettle – into the water. Allow the nettle to steep for 5-10 minutes, strain, and serve.

If you want a subtle honey flavor, add honey between 10 to 30 minutes left in the boil. To best preserve the aromatics of honey and obtain a stronger honey flavor, pre-process honey at low temperatures and add it at the end of the kettle boil so it is exposed to high temperatures for a minimal amount of time.

Mead (/miːd/), also called hydromel (particularly when low in alcohol content), is an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting honey mixed with water, and sometimes with added ingredients such as fruits, spices, grains, or hops.

Stir the honey and water mixture well, and let it cool to about 90°F. Make sure it's not too hot — when it's time to add the yeast, you don't want to kill it! Yeast is a living organism, and can only survive at temperatures below 110°F. Once the honey and water mixture has cooled, add your wine yeast or brewsy bag.

The chemical compounds in stinging nettle have a variety of health benefits for women. Because of its astringent characteristics, it can relieve unpleasant premenstrual symptoms including cramping and bloating, as well as reduce blood flow during menstruation.

Stinging nettle is generally considered safe when used as directed. Occasional side effects include mild stomach upset, fluid retention, sweating, diarrhea, and hives or rash (mainly from topical use). It is important to be careful when handling the nettle plant because touching it can cause an allergic rash.

In rare cases, nettle tea can cause stomach cramps or diarrhea. If this occurs, discontinue or reduce your use of it. Women who are pregnant or breastfeeding should sparingly use the herb in consultation with the doctor. This is because it can act as a diuretic.

Adding honey to the fermenter:

Add the honey directly to your fermentor, perhaps a Big Mouth Bubbler, and stir gently, expect a renewed fermentation within a day or two. This will leave more residual sweetness and a more intense honey character in your beer.

What is the alcohol content of honey beer? ›

Honey beer - 8%

The very high sugar content of honey makes it an environment that most bacteria and yeasts can't grow in. One group of yeasts (called osmophilic yeasts) are more tolerant of high sugar environments, and they have potential to grow in honey—they are the ones we need to be concerned about when considering fermentation.

The real strength of honey is that it adds potency and lightness to beer, as other sugars do, yet smoothes out the roughness that inevitably comes from adding sugar. We've found that honey also seems to knock the bitter edge off the hops while allowing some of the more subtle hop character to come through.

When using honey in wine making before the fermentation, you want to use it in-place-of or instead-of the sugar called for in the wine recipe you are using. As a general rule-of-thumb you can replace 1 pound of sugar with 1.2 to 1.3 pounds of honey. You can also use a wine hydrometer to determine how much honey to add.

Honey does contribute fermentable sugars but it also contributes a flavor and aroma of its own and adds value to beers by increasing their consumer appeal. Honey beer is often lighter and “crisper” than all-malt beer, but it does not lack character.

From the Bee's Knees, a gin, lemon and honey combination that dates back to the Prohibition era, to modern classics like Sam Ross' Penicillin, which combines scotch with lemon and honey-ginger syrup, the golden nectar has emerged as a prized craft co*cktail ingredient.