mugwort how much is enough

[starrfish]

found a shop at my local farmers market that caries some "unusual" herbs.
One being mugwort. I'd like to play around with a no hop dark olde ale. what herb would go well with the mugwort? how much mugwort?

any recipes would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Zymurgrafi]

If you are interested in playing around with herbs in beer I would recommend Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers. It has recipes and descriptions of many of the traditional herbs and ingredients used in brewing. I don't own a copy, I borrowed it from a friend otherwise I would reference it for you. IIRC Mugwort is pretty potent, a little goes a long way... or was that something else...

Better get the book. A pretty good reference for herbal brewing. A bit "new age" and hippy but still a good read with some good historical info.

 

[boodyrischous]

We made a spiced winterfest porter that used mugwort. Ours had 4 oz of hops, but the spices went perfectly with them. Definitely use a small amount. A good technique for adding spices is to steep them in a hard alcohol, then strain the spices out after a few days/week. That way, you can pull a sample of the beer, and add the potion to work out the correct proportions.

 

[Freezeblade]

IIRC Mugwort is pretty potent, a little goes a long way... or was that something else...

Yeah, a little goes a long way, but not as crazy as Wormwood is, that stuff's BITTER.

I can't say an exact amount, but instead of a vodka infusion, I suggest treating it like a bittering addition, so adding the herbs (mugwort, wormwood, Yarrow, etc.) for the whole boil, if you do an infusion, or throw in the herbs at flameout/30 mins, etc. then you would get more of the taste/aroma in the same way that later additons do with hops. YMMV.

 

[boodyrischous]

Yeah, it depends on what you want it to contribute. However, if you want flavor for you old ale, you could use an infusion, but it doesn't have to be vodka. For our Porter, we used Bushmills.