Beer Forum

While I was at Ebenezer's Belgian Fest I got a chance to talk with Will Meyers from Cambridge Brewing and try some of his Heather beer.
I know...it is not Belgian, but he brought a growler and was pouring samples...Thanks Will!!!

This was a great beer and while he did not give a recipe he did tell us the story of it's origin and explained some of the brewing
techniques. Haw anyone here tried this beer and/or tried to brew it? I have heather, lavender, sweet gale, etc....just looking for
some input before I dive into this experiment.

Randy Mosher has a good recipe for a Heather Beer in Radical Brewing.

(If you don't have the book, shoot me a message and I can forward it to you).

-Okt

+1, that is what I would turn too.

Here is a quick vers. of that recipe from Radical Brewing, pg. 242.

65% pale malt
25% amber malt
2% brown malt
8% heather honey, to secondary

Mash at 155

1oz saaz 60 minutes, 3%AA
2 oz heather flower tops, end of boil
.25oz meadow sweet (?) , end of boil

scottish ale yeast.
og=1.065

I would recommend sending Will an e-mail regarding this beer and what you're trying to do. A friend and I brewed a gruit ale based on Cambridge Brewing's L'amour du Jour. We found Will to be VERY helpful in creating a homebrew recipe for this beer.
I haven't had Cambridge's heather beer, but I know that BYO published a clone recipe for Fraoch Heather Ale in their 150 recipe special.

Fraoch 5-gallon recipe, straight from Williams Bros Brewing:

6 2/3 pounds Scotch Ale Malt or 6 pounds U.S. 2-row malted barley and 10 1/2 oz. Amber malt (crystal or Cara-type)
12 2/3 cups of lightly pressed flowering heather tips
Irish moss (10 minutes)

O.G. - 1.048
F.G. - 1.011

Mash at 153F for 90 minutes. Sparge as usual. Add about one-half gallon (2/3 of total) of lightly pressed heather tips and boil vigorously for 90 minutes.

Run hot wort through a sieve filled with 2 cups (1/6 of total) of heather tips into the fermenting vessel. Allow to cool and ferment at 61F for seven to 10 days. A lager-type yeast is suggested. The original yeast for Froach Ale was a Scotch ale yeast, but after years of cold slow fermentation it has evolved into a strain with a bottom-fermenting bias. When the gravity reaches 1.015, usually the fifth day, remove 1 gallon of ale, add 2 cups (1/6 of total) of heather flowers and warm to 158 degrees
F. Cover and steep for 15 minutes, then return to the fermenter.

Condition the ale as usual. For those needing a hop fix, add 1 4/5 oz. of 6% AAU hops for the 90 minute boil to provide bitterness that will not unbalance the flavors. Late addition aroma hops would compete with the delicate heather.

The specifications for the commercially-bottled ale are ABV 4.9 %; O.G., 1.048; pH 4.1; color 9 SRM (23 EBC) and bitterness 21 IBUs.

12 1/2 CUPS (!!!!) of heather flowers?!? The 2 oz. bag i bought for $5 is at most 2 cups, that recipe seems highly suspect to me, it's the Pliney The Elder of heather beers!

-piz

I'm also looking to make a Heather beer for out club's annual Oktoberfest festival. I've seen these same discrepancies, one brewer saying a couple of ounces, and another saying 12 cups. Anyone have any experience brewing one of these? I know Saaz are a common hop for these beers, but I'd rather try to avoid hops for this one and use Sweet Gale or some other herb instead. Any recommendations?

I'm guessing that part of what's going on with the discrepancy in the amount of heather is in the difference between fresh heather and dried heather. It takes quite a lot of fresh heather to make a 5 gal batch. I have made heather ale many times-- and, in my method, which achieves a very similar ale to the Fraoch, it takes about 4 cups of dried heather tips, IIRC. (I once denuded several bushes in my garden of their blossoms to make one fresh heather batch!) Sweet gale is used in the Fraoch, Three Floyds puts a smidge of lavendar in their heather ale. I've learned to be very careful with lavendar additions... or omit entirely. Heather honey, although expensive and somewhat hard to find, added right at the end of boil, lends a fantastic aroma when you pop the bottle open! I know some add it to secondary, but I've been pleased with adding it right at end of boil. The Fraoch heather ale is a rather light colored ale; others tend to be darker with the addition of amber and brown malts. In the recipes I've seen, the darker versions use less heather than the lighter versions. I also prefer WY Scottish Ale yeast to the White Lab version, for the slightly smoky, scotchlike flavor it can impart. Hops are usually downplayed alot in heather ale. Saaz might work with the light spice notes it can impart, but I've usually used NB, or something similar in the 15-20 IBU range.

Alewife