sifty
Landlord.
So here in Southern NZ we grow a lot of swede as stock food. In winter farmers will let sheep into the swede paddock to graze on the leafy tops and chew out the hard yellow root. They sweeten up after a decent frost, and as a kid I liked plucking one from a paddock and eating it raw, cutting slices with a pocketknife. I also enjoy it cooked, mashed with butter, seasoned and served alongside mashed spuds with a meal. Always looking for a local twist on beer, I thought I’d try adding some swede to a brew. As it is quite a delicate, earthy flavour, I thought a cream ale might be worth a crack, as a crisp, dry beer might suit the addition of such a veg?
Recipe was a compilation of recipes I found online, pilsner and pale ale malt base with a little flaked corn and the swede added late in the mash, using a simple clean yeast and gently hopped according to style. For a 23 litre batch I came up with:
Pilsner 2600g 58%
Pale ale 1450g 32%
Flaked corn 400g 9%
3.7kg swede cubed, boiled, mashed and added with boil liquor to the mash
Oat hulls 200g to aid circulation
Centennial (14 IBU @ 60 mins) and Hallertau Mittelfrueh (4 IBU @ 15)
US-05 dry yeast (2 pkts)
Looking at nutritional info, seems the swede will add ~ 166g sugar, made up of sucrose, fructose and glucose. Putting that into the recipe I get:
OG 1.046, FG 1.008, ABV = 5.0%
18 IBU, 8.5 EBC
So a simple enough recipe, with a 75 min boil. I honestly don’t know if this will add anything, maybe some slight colour as the boiled swede goes a light orange colour? I also debated the addition of flaked corn, as other recipes just stated to add table sugar to dry things out a bit. We’ll see what happens. Worst case will be a muddy looking but drinkable beer hopefully.
Also complicated by the fact I’ve never made (or even tasted) a cream ale before, so no idea what to expect, apart from a little more flavour than American lagers…?![Thinking face :thinking: 🤔](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f914.png)
Recipe was a compilation of recipes I found online, pilsner and pale ale malt base with a little flaked corn and the swede added late in the mash, using a simple clean yeast and gently hopped according to style. For a 23 litre batch I came up with:
Pilsner 2600g 58%
Pale ale 1450g 32%
Flaked corn 400g 9%
3.7kg swede cubed, boiled, mashed and added with boil liquor to the mash
Oat hulls 200g to aid circulation
Centennial (14 IBU @ 60 mins) and Hallertau Mittelfrueh (4 IBU @ 15)
US-05 dry yeast (2 pkts)
Looking at nutritional info, seems the swede will add ~ 166g sugar, made up of sucrose, fructose and glucose. Putting that into the recipe I get:
OG 1.046, FG 1.008, ABV = 5.0%
18 IBU, 8.5 EBC
So a simple enough recipe, with a 75 min boil. I honestly don’t know if this will add anything, maybe some slight colour as the boiled swede goes a light orange colour? I also debated the addition of flaked corn, as other recipes just stated to add table sugar to dry things out a bit. We’ll see what happens. Worst case will be a muddy looking but drinkable beer hopefully.
Also complicated by the fact I’ve never made (or even tasted) a cream ale before, so no idea what to expect, apart from a little more flavour than American lagers…?
![Thinking face :thinking: 🤔](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f914.png)
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