Nettle Beer

If you have located your patch of young nettle tops you are ready to make nettle beer. They must be young leaves as older leaves can be a kidney irritant. Young leaves are fresh green and luscious looking. If the plants are flowering the leaves are definitely too old. Older leaves are discernibly greyer.
I would recommend using leaves as soon after picking as possible. There is not much point in harvesting fresh leaves and then using them at the end of the day or the next day when they are somewhat wilted.


Nettle Beer recipe
Ingredients:

• 12 litres water
• 1 carrier bag loosely filled with young nettle tops - rinse to remove dust
• juice of 1 lemon
• juice of 1 orange
• 1.5kg sugar
• 55g cream of tartar
• 15g yeast


Method:

• Boil the water in a large pan, drop in the nettles and stir to ensure all the leaves are below the level of the water
• Leave to stand for at least an hour to infuse the flavours from the leaves (I usually leave it overnight as this allows the liquid to cool till room temperature)
• Strain the mixture into a large pan or food grade bucket
• Add the cream of tartar, lemon and orange juice
• Put about 3 litres back in a pan add the sugar and heat gently until the sugar is dissolved and add back into the rest of the liquid
• Leave to cool until tepid and stir in the yeast (never add yeast to anything over 40°C because this will kill the yeast rendering it ineffective as an ingredient)
• Cover and leave for 2-3 days (the mixture should be lightly fizzing)
• Remove any scum from the top and gently pour liquid of the top to bottle the beer leaving sediment behind


As always when bottling use sterilised bottles (same as sterilising baby bottles) and never use screw top lids on glass bottles. Use plastic bottles with screw top lids or glass bottles with corks. This ensures that if fermentation builds up pressure to explosive levels the cork will slide out, or with plastic bottles have a bit of stretch in them and if they are shattered they are not hazardous the way exploding glass bottles are

In theory the beer is ready to drink about 5 days after bottling. At this stage I find it is pleasant but still fairly sweet. It is worth waiting until about 10 days after bottling. The year old bottle that I found was very good and worth waiting for if you can hold a few back that long.

When brewing I find it helpful to taste the beer at different stages – from the first stage in the recipe that is effectively nettle tea, to adding the cream of tartar, citrus juice and sugar, having a taste at the bottling stage and then sampling at various stages after bottling. Doing this helps you understand how the acidity, sugar and alcohol levels change through the process of fermentation, as well as getting a sneak preview of the flavour.