Swamp Cabbage / Heart of Palm

Hi there, first time on here. I was wondering if anyone has experience using Fresh Heart of Palm in a ber recipe. I'm planning on doing a Florida Beer, having the base be an American Wheat and adding in fresh orange peel, florida wildflower honey and fresh swamp cabbage (another name for heart of palm).

Haven’t had a lot of heart of palm, but the flavor is pretty mild. How are you thinking of using it? Does it have much starch (which would require adding it to the mash)?

We did a DC beer last year with local honey, smoked malt, homegrown hops, and the house strain from a local brewpub. Turned out to be a solid smoked stout.

I'm not sure of the starch content but I imagine it would be pretty starchy since it will eventually become very fibrous. Is there a reason why it would have to be mashed because of the starchiness if I'm not looking for it to really contribute fermentables? The more I think about it, I'm thinking that I may try extracting the juice from part of it. Or I may just cut it into small chunks and add it to the fermentor (ideally secondary but I can't keep it that long, I'm already scarred for keeping it this long)

The starches can serve as food for bacteria and cloud the beer if they aren't broken down into sugars. If you are planning on drinking the beer pretty fresh it isn't a big deal, just something to be aware of. Good luck.

Good to know. As an aside, I'm also in the DC area, which brewpub did you get the yeast from and I also love your blog.

flycrg said:

Good to know. As an aside, I'm also in the DC area, which brewpub did you get the yeast from and I also love your blog.

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Thanks.

We got it from District ChopHouse. One of the guys in DCHB knows the brewer, but most of them are pretty nice if you let them know in advance and come with a sanitized mason jar. You should come out for a meeting sometime.