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Drink

Nettle Beer

A fermented beverage made from boiled nettles, water, sugar, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Nettle Beer

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the nettles in 5 gallons of water for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture and add 2 pounds of sugar.

  3. Add 1 pint of yeast or 5 yeast cakes.

  4. Let it stand for 12 hours.

  5. Skim off any foam and bottle the beer.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Nettles
Give the beer its herbal flavor and characteristic bitterness.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast, which turns it into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing alcohol and carbonation in the beer.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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