Rohan, walking in the rain and wild brewing (yeast pee, pumps and poo)

Has all gone a bit quite on Olga the clipper at the moment, so will give them a call on Monday to see how things are working out with the tides.

Rohan

Heard back from Rohan on Friday, had a lovely email from Andy, who said it was a great adventure, but unfortunately they weren’t able to support by donating any kit or in any financial capacity (they must get 1000s of requests) but I can post details of the journey on their forum.  So will do that.

Rain

Rich and I went walking in the rain on Thursday (training). Got wet. That’s that.

Wild Brewing

So, on to more exciting stuff. Wild Brewing – or ‘Booze For Free’ as the workshop was called.

This, I thought would be a perfect way to a) do some research into what would have been drunk in the 5^th century, and b) improve my knowledge of brewing.  A useful skill for a lady.

So off I went to Windmill City Farm to do just that.

The workshop was run by Andy Hamilton – who is a bit of an expert in foraging and brewing.

Andy is a bestselling author (latest book – Booze for free – I now have my very own signed copy ;-), co-founder of award winning website www.selfsufficientish.com, guardian blog writer  - check this out for interesting recipes (as well as other magazines), Autumn watch presenter and all-round nice chap. Check him out here: http://www.theotherandyhamilton.com/

Our first introduction to brewing was to learn about how yeast works – ‘Fungus eat my sugar’ and that yeast – like all living beings – pees, pumps and poos.  (Stronger words were used – but I’ve opted for these as I think they are funny.)

Yeast pee = the alcohol, Yeast pumps = carbon dioxide 

and Yeast poo = the sediment.

The three P’s of brewing. 

We got very technical with our terminology. ;-)

First off we made ‘prison booze’ (great name!)  – which consists of sugar, warm water, fruit juice, yeast water– (from bread that has been soaked in water, wholemeal works best apparently) all put in a plastic bottle, left somewhere warm and then ready to drink in five days! (Mustn’t forget to open the lid now and again to let out the yeast ‘pumps’ otherwise they’ll be an explosion..!

We were given a blue peter style ‘here’s one I made earlier’ sample to try. And it was GOOD. Just like orangina but alcoholic.  

Then we moved on to making yarrow beer. We took a trip outside at this point and walked around the farm, where Andy pointed out different plants and told us what we could do with them.  I love this kind of stuff! Burdock, nettles, jack by the hedge, hops, herb bennett – the roots have a clovey smell and this was used to flavour ale in medieval times (just what I needed to know) as well as plantain, cleavers (goose grass) and alexander’s. Which I’ve been eating recently! There is so much around us to eat, enjoy and experiment with! (Think I’ll add another page just on these herbs as they have so many uses and fascinating histories). We picked some yarrow and headed back inside as it started to rain.

The yarrow is actually used to flavour the beer and adds the ‘bitter’ flavour. Without these bitters beer would taste rather sweet.

In medieval times – before the introduction of hops in the 11^th century, herb beer or ‘gruit’ was made. As hops act as a preservative medieval beer would have only lasted a few days. So it didn’t keep or travel very well.  Hops are also a soporific so make you sleepy, Andy told us a wonderful story about a party he held where he served Rosemary beer – without any hops, and it went on till 07.00am. No one was tired. New kind of energy beer perhaps…who needs Red Bull?

Typical herbs that would have been used in medieval beers were: Yarrow, Bog Myrtle, Bay, Ground Ivy, Rosemary, Thyme and Woodhaven (Herb Bennett). And they would also have drunk something called Metheglin – which is a ‘spiced’ honey based alcoholic drink. So a ‘Spicy’ Mead!  Spices such as cloves, cinnamon or nutmeg, or herbs such as oregano, hops, or even lavender or chamomile were added. So could also be considered to have been medicinal. Neat.

As the beer didn’t last that long – 5^th century folk would also have drunk ‘gone off beer.’ We tried some today – and I liked it. It was fizzier than you might expect for a beer but wasn’t nasty tasting, in fact it was rather tasty and didn’t taste ‘off’ at all.

Apparently you can still buy this kind of beer. It’s called Lambic and is made in Belgium.

Here’s what I’ve found out about that: (thank you wiki)

Lambic is a very distinctive type of beer brewed traditionally in the Pajottenland region of Belgium. Unlike conventional ales and lagers, which are fermented by carefully cultivated strains of brewer's yeasts, lambic beer is produced by spontaneous fermentation: it is exposed to the wild yeasts and bacteria that are said to be native to the Senne valley, in which Brussels lies. It is this unusual process which gives the beer its distinctive flavour: dry, vinous, and cidery, usually with a sour aftertaste.

After making our beer, siphoning it and bottling it – then having a go using the bottle cap ‘fitter’ it was sampling time and Q&A. We tried plum wine, knotweed, alexanders and rubharb wine, yarrow beer, horshradish vodka…I think that was everything! Personally I enjoyed the beers more than the wines as I found them a bit too sharp for my taste – but others on the course really liked them.

So after a great day, gaining lots of really useful information and meeting some great people, I feel all fired up and ready to have ago at making some actual medieval beer and metheglin.  Anyone fancy making some and comparing notes?  We can take it with us then and drink it when we get to Morwenstow. (or err on route if it won’t last…?).