Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby modification

[guyb]

Well, it's the first brew in the new Man Cave Brewery, and I decided to do a recipe from the BYOBRA book and chose the Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild.

Previously I posted that I'd had a few pints of Huna Red from Sunny Republic at the Sheffield Tap, one of the unusual additions being Hibiscus Flowers.

So, I decided to add 50g of Hibiscus Flowers at flameout for 20minutes (as suggested by Chief at said brewery).

Here's the weighing process, I'll not bore you with more shots of grain and stuff, but the hibiscus gives a very rounded almost fruity berry liquorice taste - difficult to describe. Although WikiPedia describes it as a tart like cranberry, drunk around the world as a tea, both hot and cold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiscus_tea

Having more room now, I had a much better sparge, and got a good OG, final pre yeast OG was 1.070, slightly over the anticipated 1.058 in the book, but not complaining.

Here's a close up of the flowers. I have to say, the wort tastes amazing, added some pre-hydrated nottingham yeast.

Hoping for good results :grin:

This is about 200g of flowers which I picked up from Covent Garden (Neales Yard) last time I was there £6 for the lot, they should impart some colour too

 

[Darcey]

Ohhh Interested to see how this turns out. ! :thumb:

 

[PD]

interesting addition, although I found that the SH brew had lots of fruity flavours in it to start with, I tried altering the recipe once and it changed the whole brew taste to something that took " a little getting use to "...lol
It got drunk...

 

[guyb]

interesting addition, although I found that the SH brew had lots of fruity flavours in it to start with, I tried altering the recipe once and it changed the whole brew taste to something that took " a little getting use to "...lol
It got drunk...

Well, that's an interesting point, as I tipped in 25g of Hib, I thought, hmm, what if it tastes ****, and I thought, sod it, all 50g in. If it's rank, it'll be drank! :thumb:

You'll have to pop down for a cheeky beer when it's ready to see what you think :grin:

 

[PD]

and your welcome to call in for a taste of mine anytime....pm me when your free sometime

 

[guyb]

Well, this is perhaps the best beer I've ever made.

The ale has a rich biscuity, treacly almost liquorice taste to it, whether this is solely down to the hibiscus flowers I don't know, but it is pretty tasty! I think I can taste the hibiscus, almost fruity cranberry flavours.

I don't have much time at the moment, so I might stick a Wherry on with an addition of 50g of Hibiscus, and see how it turns out :-)
It's very red: