So here's my experiment with Yeongji mushroom.
Some background--I live in South Korea, and Yeongji mushrooms(reishi in japanese) are popular for tea. It's refreshingly bitter and earthy. Recently we've run out of nugget hops over here, so I decided to give this a try. Dandelions and tettnang were thrown in because I wanted a "foresty" feel to the beer--earthy, smoky, flowery.
I was pretty happy with the wort--if it weren't so cloudy it'd have actually made a really tasty "tea". Sweet with a really, really earthy bitterness. If this turns out, we might have a nice substitute for nugget hops on this side of the world.
Yeongji--Dandelion Smoked Ale
Steeping
1kg: smoked malt
500g: carapils malt
1 yeongji mushroom: for this part, prepare the yeongji a day or two before. Break the cap into pieces and lightly boil it in a gallon of water for 2 hours (covered pot). Pour the tea and mushroom pieces into a mason jar and put it in the fridge. Remove the mushroom pieces from the tea and put them in the steeping wort. Drink the tea or pour it out.
Boil
60min
2.5kg: dme light (although, in retrospect, beerschool may have accidently sent me 2kgs).
28g: cascade hops
1.5 tblsp: irish moss
15mins
14g: tettnanger hops
8mins
Take a hop/grain bag and place dried dandelion flowers in itroughly two fistfuls of dandelions (two cups?)and place into wort
5 mins
In the same grain/hop bag as the dandelions, put in the other 14g of tettnanger hops
5 gallon OG: 1.054
Some background--I live in South Korea, and Yeongji mushrooms(reishi in japanese) are popular for tea. It's refreshingly bitter and earthy. Recently we've run out of nugget hops over here, so I decided to give this a try. Dandelions and tettnang were thrown in because I wanted a "foresty" feel to the beer--earthy, smoky, flowery.
I was pretty happy with the wort--if it weren't so cloudy it'd have actually made a really tasty "tea". Sweet with a really, really earthy bitterness. If this turns out, we might have a nice substitute for nugget hops on this side of the world.
Yeongji--Dandelion Smoked Ale
Steeping
1kg: smoked malt
500g: carapils malt
1 yeongji mushroom: for this part, prepare the yeongji a day or two before. Break the cap into pieces and lightly boil it in a gallon of water for 2 hours (covered pot). Pour the tea and mushroom pieces into a mason jar and put it in the fridge. Remove the mushroom pieces from the tea and put them in the steeping wort. Drink the tea or pour it out.
Boil
60min
2.5kg: dme light (although, in retrospect, beerschool may have accidently sent me 2kgs).
28g: cascade hops
1.5 tblsp: irish moss
15mins
14g: tettnanger hops
8mins
Take a hop/grain bag and place dried dandelion flowers in itroughly two fistfuls of dandelions (two cups?)and place into wort
5 mins
In the same grain/hop bag as the dandelions, put in the other 14g of tettnanger hops
5 gallon OG: 1.054