Heather Ale my first sour

Hi
I have been interested in historical beers since long before I started brewing, and have been wondering how beer did taste before hops and controlled yeast culturing. So I finally decided to try a heather ale and this fall I brewed it.

heather ale (Gruit)

Original Gravity (OG): 1.055 (°P): 13.6
Final Gravity (FG): 1.009 (°P): 2.3
Alcohol (ABV): 6.05 %
Color (SRM): 10.8 (EBC): 21.3
Bitterness (IBU): 0.0 (Average)

44.92% Domen Pale Ale malt ( home malted locally grown two row barley)
33.7% Munich II
12.54% Vienna
6.75% Caraamber
2.09% svedjarug malt (home malted Rye)


10 g/L Heather @ 90 Minutes (Mash)
20+ g/L Heather @ 90 Minutes (Boil)
20+ g/L Heather @ 15 Minutes (Boil)
10 g/L Heather @ 0 Days (Secondary)

Single step Infusion at 66°C for 90 Minutes. Boil for 60 Minutes

Fermented at 20°C with Safale S-04

Notes: I used fresh heather flower tops and used allot of it.
I also use a good amount in the mash tun as a filter and might also use some juniper branches(with blue juniper berry's) to get a more Norwegian style next time I brew something similar.

I also drew of a weak beer from the same mash and fermented that with heather honey, it tasted so good that I regret not using honey in the big beer to. But perhaps some lightly warmed heather honey in the glass when I drink it would be nice.

Both beers taste sour and fresh almost like a geuze. both has a nice flowery spicy aroma of heather and the small beer has the added honey aroma. I migth tone the heather down somwhat next time.
I whonder how this beer ages, it is migty sour now. I will also do some blending with a mead I have and perhaps with a mountain cranbeery weizen I'm about to botle.

Next time I brew this I will definitively ad honey to the recipe, and some crystal rye to sweeten the finished beer.

Recipe Generated with BrewMate[/b

Have any one tasted the Scottish Faoch is that a sour beer?

i havent tasted that beer, but Ive brewed a pictish ale aka heather ale myself

It had a distinctive tartness to it as well, I only used the flowers in the boil, so Im guessing something about the flowers themselves are sour. Yours looks like you had fresh flowers to the secondary which is most likely the reason for most of your sourness. I really like heather flowers, they have a very nice flavor and aroma in a lighter beer. I havent had the honey before, how would you say it tastes?

It's been a long time since I had it, but I would describe Fraoch as malty.

The heather honey has a heavy distinct flavor that's difficult to describe. a large part of the honey produced in Norway is heather honey, or a mixture of heather and "summer"/flower honey. I think many finds heather honey to have to strong a flavor, especially for use as sweetener in tea.

I did have heather flowers in the primary fermenter, and I did that mainly to give the wild yeast or other critters a chance. In the main beer I gave the yeast a week head start before putting in the fresh flowers. but in the small beer I put in the flowers directly and only a few grains of dry yeast. I would say that both beers have roughly the same sourness and yeast character so I'm unsure if there have been any wild yeast or bacteria in it. The sourness is not like vinegar at all, but its quite acidic so there could have been some lactobacter or something.

Is there some list of character's that different "contaminants" can give to beers, so I can try to define if the acidity comes from the heather, bacteria or a wild-yeast?

As for the Fraoch being malty that makes sense as heather ale is mentioned to be sweet in the poetry of old. I think the pictish brew is still a mystery and it was legendary even in it's heyday. Do you have a recipe you can share of your brew?

AHS does a Fraoch clone kit.

I tasted the small beer to day and it was great, it had small "champagne" bubbles and a strong heather aroma and flavor, and although it is sour it is not to much. I did not mention in the recipe that the small beer only got two-tree grains of the dry yeast in the fermenter and a handful of fresh heather flowers. so I'm starting to think that this one got some nice wild yeast or other bug in with the heather.

It is some time since I tasted the big heather beer but then it tasted too sour and had little co2. I hope it will get better to but I thing it might be domed to be used as a vinegar or in a blend sometime. It do not taste of acetic acid but have a clean strong sourness, it taste good but way to sour (at least it was last time I tasted it)

Wow now the big beer is getting really good, it's still fairly tart but the acidity is somehow less and the taste is getting more complex. I knew that storing thees sour beers would make them better, but I'm amazed how much change has occurred. from being like vinegar in acidity to being more like a lemonade or geuse. and the heather flavor is still huge and lovely.

I will brew this again (it's almost heather season)