Brewing with Wormwood

Wormwood Ale

4 lb malt extract
1 lb raw wildflower honey
1/2 oz wormwood
4 gallons water
yeast

Bring water to a boil and add wormwood and let simmer for 1 hour. When cooled to 160 F., strain over malt extract and honey in fermenting vessel. Cool to 70 F. and add yeast. Allow to ferment about 1 week. Rack to keg or bottles and carbonate.

Paraphrased from the book "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers" by Stephen Harrod Buhner.

jrgile02 said:

I know what absinthe is I was just wondering why they would have it in the additives section in midwestsupplies if you couldnt brew with it. Does anybody know what the deal is?

Click to expand...

It was legalized in 2007, for drinks containing less than 10ppm. The FDA considers it to be thujone free at that point.

Edit: Sorry I didn't notice this thread had gone to 9 pages...this was probably already pointed out but I'll leave it here in case it was not....I need to stop drinking and reading HBT haha

Last week I did a saison style ale but used 1oz wormwood for bittering instead of hops (I did use a couple ozs hops for flav & aroma). Just transferred it over to secondary and it's undrinkably bitter!! I know it should soften with age, but I was thinking about dumping 2 or 3 lbs of honey into secondary now and let her ferment again for a few weeks. Then bottle and age for a month. I figure the honey's sweetness and increased alcohol will help balance the bitter. Any thoughts? Oh, I also added heather tips & flowers last 5 min of boil and dry steeping 1oz heater too. Not your average brew....

Freedom Vs Wormwood... this trial is about to begin.