For this beer we tried using heather as the bittering agent. Heather was a herb traditionally used in Scotland for beer production before the arrival of hops.
This was also our first attempt at a smaller batch size, and an all grain (no extracts used) brew!
The beer came out with a clean sour flavor that allows you to detect the heather underneath. Final alcohol content was 4.4%.
Our heather beer
The 1 gallon recipe was:
2 lbs. USA Two-Row grains
1/4 lbs. 120 Crystal Malt grains
90 minute mash
1.5 oz. Heather (beginning of boil)
.5 oz. Heather (filtration)
.5 oz. Heather (dry; 1 week into fermentation)
Suggestions for improvement would be to decrease the amount of crystal malt used to decrease the sweetness.
