Nature's Secret Larder - Tis the season to be brewing!

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Bushcraft Blog

Tis the season to be brewing!
19th November 2008

It's been week full of excitement here. I have been gathering nettles with my friend Andrew and making a nettle beer with a twist, the trouble is will the twist work? Anyway, we will see and IF it does I'm sure the recipe or tutorial will be placed on the site. We are also planning on brewing 40 bottles of a not so wild Norfolk Nog!


Home brewing has a bit of a stigma attached to it. It's often said it's only for old boys who have stress free lives in the country, but the truth is its fun, and has a good element of excitement, and even danger. When I was out buying some yeast the other day I was told a story of lady who left her beer a little too long in the bottle, the glass bottle blew-up and shredded her legs to bits, not nice, but true. So, it is a serious game, but the fun and unknown element far outweighs these freak risks.


For our nettle brew we must have picked a good kilo of young nettle tops (without gloves I might add). I knew of a great patch to collect them from, but after walking 20 minutes to get there it turned out someone had chopped the lot of them down, so we were resigned to the very small nettles just pushing through the soil. This proved to be more work, but every moment was fun, apart from stumbling across a patch where we could clearly smell a fox. Needless to say we left those nettles to it!


Anyway, as I write this the yeast is doing its magic and the nettle beer is brewing away like a pot of molten gold. It will be ready for bottling on Friday!

Catch you on the trail

Kris


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