Spruce/Pine Beer

[aurelius121ad]

Yeah, the oatmeal was to add body. At that time I couldnt find malt and wanted a thicker beer. (I have my first brew using malt extract instead of glucose going now!) Maybe the oatmeal did mask the pine flavor but thats probably a good thing, as I said I didnt use fresh spring growth pine needles. And tea resulting from the boiling the needles didnt smell particularly strong or good. I was hesitant to put it in at all but my brewing partner said "f--- it, put it in anyway!"

[ryan]

Yeah, as I said I didnt use fresh spring growth pine needles. And tea resulting from the boiling the needles didnt smell particularly strong or good. I was hesitant to put it in at all but my brewing partner said "f--- it, put it in anyway!"

RE: "f---- it, put it in anyway"

You`ve done the right thing there, aurelius.
You would be surprised at the quality of brews that have resulted from those 6 magic words.
Naturally, we have our resident purists that would be horrified, but no one takes any notice of them
p.s. remember I warned you about the impending rice shortage?
It`s happening here.

[aurelius121ad]

Seeing that I have tasted it and it is drinkable I learned that as long as you dont do anything ridiculously off the wall with your brew you wil end up with something OK. I was thinking we may end up with half the batch being undrinkable when we tossed it in.

As far as the rice shortage I think you need to complain to my country (USA) not about China. China farms the hell out of its land - I have seen loads of mountains here with levels like a staircase so they too can be utilized as farmland. The US govt pays farmers in the midwest NOT to grow to their full capability, if the US were to farm a higher percentage of its land and export it there would be a lot more to go around.