One of Patrick's Christmas gifts to me, Stephen Harrod Buhner's book Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers, inspired me to use some of the heather tips I've had kicking around for a while. Named after a short and silly MP skit I love.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 1 oz Brewer's Best heather tips (calluna vulgaris)
  • 40 oz Kirkland clover honey
  • 1 tsp yeast nutrient
  • ½ tsp yeast energizer
  • ½ pack of RedStar champagne yeast, rehydrated in ¼ cup oz of 100-degree water

Yield: Aye, she's a 1-gallon batch.

Instructions

I boiled 98 oz of bottled, purified water, then added the heather tips in a brewing sock and allowed them to steep until the water was around 90 degrees F while I bottled batches 29 and 35, approximately two hours. I poured the honey, yeast energizer, and yeast nutrient in a sanitized glass carboy, then topped it off with the heather tea and filtered tap water to the 1-gallon line. As usual, I aerated for approximately 10 minutes by capping, shaking, and uncapping the carboy repeatedly. Pitched the yeast and done. Starting gravity was 1.07.

Observations

  • 2016-12-26T16:00:00: Ferment away, my friend!
  • 2017-03-04T16:00:00: At bottling, this one sat at 0.996 SG (9.58% ABV). The heather really isn't coming through at all at this stage, and I hope it develops into something more interesting yet.