Elder Beer

After a week off of brewing, it seems like these inspiration posts are piling up.  But I crossed the beef on weck beer off of the list so I thought I should replace it with another interesting idea for a beer.  And as luck should have it, I got my shipment of herbs from Mountain Rose Herbs in last week.  From what I have seen, their prices are great and something that really interested me is their monthly specials section.  After looking at their January 2011 specials, it almost makes me want to brew something out of Guarana Seeds.

The one that I'm planning on highlighting in this post is another that is based out of the Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers book and one that Marygrace helped me pick out.  It's completely based around the elder plant (information starting on page 330).  Typically when elder is used in alcohols it is an elder berry wine, so I thought an elder beer would be a bit more interesting.  Both of the recipes in the book seemed pretty basic so I decided to jazz them up a bit and combine both the elder berry and elder flower in the same beer as well as use malts instead of sugars to get the proper yeast food.

I plan on keeping this one a bit lighter in alcohol and color.  I tasted both the berries and the flowers and I feel that those flavors will both be highlighted with a beer base that is lighter in flavor as well.  Other than that, I'm not planning on anything else to exciting for this beer.  Keep checking back for updates.  The target brew date for this beer is 2/13.

I thought I would leave everyone with this photo.  The basis of any good beer, horseradish root and slices and caraway seeds:


Primary: Beef on Weck
Secondary: American Pale Ale
Carbonating: Rye-rish Red Ale