Nettle braggot - Seven Trees style

Start with as many nettles will fit in the picking basket. We only use the top few leaves of young plants. They'll regrow soon and we can harvest more for drying.

Then bring 1.5 gallons of water to a boil. While the water is heating steep 1 pound malted oats (this should add a nice sweet-nutty flavor and a creamy mouthfeel) 15 minutes or until the water reaches 170F. Take the oats out and add 3lbs dried malt extract. Normally we use liquid malt, but we had bought dried so we could make this recipe when we felt like it, without having to run to town for malt. When the malt is dissovled completely, add the pile of nettles. Boil while stirring occasionally for 50 minutes, then add 2 to 3lbs honey. We just spooned in what looked like a quart jar's worth, since a quart of honey weighs around 2.5lbs. Boil 10 more minutes, then set the kettle in a sink of ice water to chill rapidly. Strain into the carboy and top up with cold water. Add yeast (we used Northwest Ale yeast from Northern Brewer), mix and put the airlock on.

After 24 hours or so, the nettle braggot yeasties (oh yeah! a braggot is loosely defined as a beer-type beverage made with both honey and malted grain) decided to take advantage of the extra sweetness to mount an escape attempt. Things have settled down now, and in a week or so we'll transfer the braggot to another carboy to finish fermenting. A week or so after that, and it goes into bottles. Two weeks after that, and we can drink it!
We put the new trailer to good use this weekend by picking up a load of wood. We've gone through nearly double the wood we did last winter, so we want to make sure we restock as soon as possible. Sometimes when summer heats up, the woodcutters aren't allowed into the forest due to fire risks. Then everyone is backed up and on waiting lists, sometimes until the rains come back in the fall.
No wonder Magnus doesn't want to venture outside! Toshi and one of the Red Stars were having a conference on the back porch. The flock always seems to ignore the 'no chickens on the porch' rule, until they get caught and chased off.
Last but not least, a little down time with the house critters in front of a warm fire.

We enjoyed the spring weather preview Saturday, temps in the 70's and a lovely breezy sunny day. The greenhouse sprouts are in the ground now - lettuce, chard, spinach, broccoli and onions. We'll be planting more over the next few weeks, with the warm weather plants - beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, corn, melons - going in late May.

Stella is still going gangbusters as a milk cow. I've taken the luxury of skipping a couple days of milking here & there, so we can use up all the milk she provides. This week we made a soft cheese with chives, roasted garlic and cracked pepper mixed in. A gallon of milk netted 2lbs of it, with 2qts of whey left over for the dogs & hens. We made 4oz of butter from a pint of top cream. Over a quart of yogurt. And tonight I'll start a pint more of cream souring. Yum!!!

Time to start shopping for an ice cream maker.

It’s that time again – nettle season!

Why get so excited about an obnoxious, invasive and painful weed? Because it’s tasty, healthy and ever-so-useful. Here’s what Euell Gibbons had to say about nettles in Stalking the Healthful Herbs:
“Unlike many health foods, nettle greens are really good, as well as being good for you.In addition to their good taste, nettles are rich in vitamins A and C, amazingly high in protein, filled with chlorophyll, and probably exceedingly rich in many of the essential trace minerals.
No grazing animal will eat a live nettle, but when nettles are mowed and dried, all kinds of livestock eat them avidly and thrive on them. Horses get shinier coats and improve in health when fed dried nettles. Cows give more and richer milk when fed on nettle hay. Hens lay more eggs when powdered nettle leaves are added to their mash, and these eggs actually have a higher food value. Even the manure from nettle-fed animals is improved, and makes better fertilizer.
Nettles furnish one of the most valuable of all plant substances to use as a mulch in your garden, or to add to your compost pile. Having approximately seven percent nitrogen, figured on a dry-weight basis, this plant is richer in this essential nutrient than many commercial fertilizers.”

From the Nebraska Sustainable Agriculture Society:
“Nettle leaf has a long history of folk use. Nettle greens are wonderfully nutritious, containing large portions of minerals, vitamins A and C, chlorophyll, and protein. Nettle leaf has the ability to increase the production of urine and to increase the efficiency of liver and kidney function. It is used for anemia, has shown antiallergenic properties in hay fever, is taken for urinary problems such as cystitis and stones, and because it increases the excretion of uric acid, it is also used for arthritis and rheumatism. In Europe, nettle rhizomes are used to reduce the inflammation and improve the painful urination that can be part of non-cancerous prostate enlargement. This plant is quite safe. No side effects or contraindications have been reported for nettle products. Nettle leaf is considered to be safe during pregnancy.
Nettle is commonly used as fresh leaf (must be cooked to deactivate the sting), dried leaf, tea, tincture, capsule, tablet and ointment. I like to use nettle leaves in a number of ways. A particular favorite is as a mixture of chopped and lightly steamed nettle leaf, ricotta cheese, tofu and/or egg, and seasonings which I use as a layer in a lasagna dish or use to fill pasta such as manicotti. Nettle leaves are a tasty addition to some soups and stews and can be added to other cooked greens such as spinach, collards, or kale. In the summer, I make sun tea using fresh nettle leaves and fresh mint leaves - adding a touch of lemon makes a refreshing tea. I also dry nettle leaves and use them for tea, in soups, or as a substitute for parsley. Freezing nettles works well for use during the winter months. I chop the fresh leaves and then lightly steam before freezing. Frozen nettle is easily added to soups and stews or cooked as a green. And then there is the tincture I make with the fresh (or dried) leaves and use as a tonic. Oh, by the way, I have read that dried nettle leaf is also useful as animal feed.”

Some harvesting tips from Botanical.com:

"When the herb is collected for drying, it should be gathered only on a fine day, in the morning, when the sun has dried off the dew. Cut off just above the root, rejecting any stained or insect-eaten leaves, and tie in bunches, about six to ten in a bunch, spread out fanwise, so that the air can penetrate freely to all parts.
Hang the bunches over strings. If dried in the open, keep them in half-shade and bring indoors before there is any risk of damp from dew or rain. If dried indoors, hang up in a sunny room, and failing sun, in a well-ventilated room by artificial heat. Care must be taken that the window be left open by day so that there is a free current of air and the moisture-laden, warm air may escape. The bunches should be of uniform size and length, to facilitate packing when dry, and when quite dry and crisp must be packed away at once in airtight boxes or tins, otherwise moisture will be reabsorbed from the air."

At Seven Trees, we prefer nettles fresh-picked and steamed, dried for tea, and best of all...in beer! Sometime in the next couple weeks, we’ll be starting a batch of our notorious nettle braggot, a mixture of nettles, barley malt, honey, hops, water & yeast. It tastes rather herbal, but interesting, and adds a bit of a warm flush to the beverage experience....We’ll share the recipe on brewing day.

Here is the garage, with roof on. Tomorrow the slab will be poured.

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Milking log:

Stella is consistently giving 3 quarts, sometimes a bit more, after being separated from Doug 4-5 hours. She's getting better about let down, which means the cream content is getting better too. This weekend we hope to try making sour cream and maybe some kind of soft cheese.

What's 'hop'pening?

Before we get to the breaking news section of this blog post, I have to share how tasty the potimarron squash are. I browned some bratwurst, picked a few giant sage leaves, and started the squash baking. Once the sausages were ready, I cut them in thirds, wrapped each piece with a sage leaf, using a toothpick to hold it together. Then the brat chunks went into the squash halves for a bit more baking. The sage flavored the meat, and the sagey meat juices flavored the squash. A wonderful combination! The squash has a really dense, custardy texture, and rich, earthy flavor. They are a C. maxima variety, so unless we find some other must-try squash in this species group, we'll give potimarron another try next year. We didn't get the yields we expected from any of our squashes, so I can't really judge this variety without another growing season.

Now for the Halloween-appropriate scary news -

For drinkers of craft beer, prices may soon be hopping!

Due to a variety of factors (a great 4-page article here, detailing the impact of this crisis on bakers as well as brewers), including extreme weather, overseas competition for brewing ingredients (hops & grains), hedge fund speculators in agricultural commodities futures, less acreage planted in hops & barley (thanks to the ethanol boom), and more land under (profitable development)pavement than under cultivation. This is resulting in some newer, smaller breweries being forced to consider not just raising prices, but going out of business altogether!

"...Hale's Ales Brewery in Seattle, known for its Mongoose India Pale Ale, next year could end up paying 75 percent more for its malt, and it's seeing prices for hops rise to $20 per pound from $3 per pound, said production manager Rudyard "J." Kipling....

Pike Brewing raised the price of its six-packs recently, to about $10, which puts it among the most expensive craft beers. So it's not planning any further boosts for now.
"It seems obvious now that we did the right thing, because others will have no choice but to raise their prices," Finkel said.
At Mukilteo's Diamond Knot Brewing Inc., huge jumps in contracted hops prices "have put us in a cash-flow crunch," said Vice President Bob Maphet.
"We have to pay tens of thousands of dollars right now for something we won't use until next year, and we're trying to figure out how to pay for it," he said. "Where there's an increase, everyone needs to find a way to pass it on. The impact could be higher beer prices, simple as that."..."

Growers work on a contract system, a season or more ahead. So the larger breweries have their orders placed way before smaller ones, who may not know exactly how much they will need for the coming year, may not have the established relationships to put them at the head of the ordering line, or may not be able to afford the astronomical price hikes on a typical new-business budget. Washington State grows nearly all the country's hops, and most of those in the Yakima Valley.

How can you help? What can you do?

Support your favorite microbreweries! Yes the cost will be higher, but we can't put a price on preserving a timeless, unique tradition in the face of this global crisis. We can't let the shortsighted "strategies" of agribusiness reward corporate megabrewers (if you can call that tasteless stuff beer), or the folks selling good cropland for superfluous housing developments, or energy companies seeking taxpayer subsidies for mono-cropping corn for ethanol. Vote with your dollars and keep beer-diversity alive!

And.......brew your own! The more homebrewers, the merrier. There is a renewed interest in historical, pre-hop-era ales. These herbal beers are called Gruits, and people all over the world have made them for millennia. Each area, and sometimes each household, had their own house blend of herbs and spices that gave preservative qualities, medicinal benefits, and unique flavor. We're lucky enough at Seven Trees to have a once-widely-used brewing herb called ground ivy growing like a weed throughout our lawn. Common "weeds" like nettle, yarrow, mugwort and herbs like rosemary, basil & mint are often used as well. We're doing our part, and have 2 kinds of beer in the works right now, with 2 more on order for brewing in the next week or so. Spring will have us back in the nettle patch to recreate our infamous nettle braggot too!

I'll leave you with this nifty picture of historical brewsters (Wow! Put a pointy hat on them, and you can see where the stereotypical Halloween witch came from). Click the link for a really neat online exhibit from the National Women's History Museum called - Building the New World: The Women of Jamestown Settlement.