This brew is based on a recipe from one of my favorite brewing books, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.

Sage and licorice in brew pot.

The process is a bit different than anything I’ve done so far. After boiling a gallon and a cup of water, I added 1/2 ounce of sage and 1/2 ounce of licorice root. This was simmered for an hour.

Then, after checking to make sure the temperature was at around 160 degrees, I turned off heat and slowly added and dissolved the malt extract and brown sugar (safety first.) I used liquid malt extract. This can be purchased by the can or 3 lb. plastic bottle from your favorite home brew supplier.

After cooling down to around 70 degrees, I transferred the wort to a fermenting bucket. I actually used a sanitized, battery operated latte frothing wand to aerate the mixture after adding the yeast.

Note: The original recipe added 1/2 oz sage to the fermenting vessel as well. I didn’t do that because I didn’t want it too “sagey” so I just added 2 tiny fresh sage leaves from my garden. We’ll see if my hunch was right or wrong.

The Ingredients:
1 gal + 1 cup of water.
1 lb. of Malt extract
1/2 lb. of brown sugar
1/2 oz. Licorice root
1/2 oz. Fresh sage leaves
Yeast: US05

One thing to also know about the recipes in this book is that the recommended fermenting time is usually 7 to 10 days rather than the usual 2 weeks. This seems a bit risky. I will use flip tops for bottling to avoid explosions.

See you next time. Happy brewing.