Originally I had another post in the pipeline when I suddenly realised it's the 150th episode of #beersaturday for which I had special plans with an extraordinary post.
Right then I saw the woodruff at my grandma's place beeing ready for harvest and, paired with a few sh semi pleasant beers last week, I came up with a plan.
After a few disappointing 'Helles' style encounters, inspiration struck with the idea of adding the refreshing woodruff flavours to straighten out the flaws.
Woodruff in beer is nothing new. Berlin is actually pretty famous for this particular habit of making their brews...drinkable - so to speak. At least for those who are more or less of legal drinking age, but not physically.
Back in the days they might have used actual woodruff, but for convenience reasons and because regulations on it's main ingredient are very strict, everyone uses artificial flavouring nowadays.
I'm not into artificial sugar syrups - I prefer the real deal!
Handle with care!
Although the herb has a long history of use for health benefits, woodruff contains coumarin which is toxic in large quantities. Some may know this from the fake cinnamon they use in Christmas cookies, which can easily exceed the official safety limits.
Aside from that it's said to have all kinds of positive effects like anti-inflammatory and anticonvusalt properties and is used against headaches. Furthermore it seems to help with liver problems. Perfect attributes to be paired with beer, no?
Let's go!
The coumarin stuff in woodruff is held hostage by some other highly bio-chemical substance, so in order to make this herb usefull we have to let it wilt for a day to get any flavours. For better handling I made bundles of 5 to 10 stems and pegged them together - then let it sit in a warm place for 24 hours.
Infusing an already bottled beer is quite the challenge, as opening the bottle realeases the carbonation and our beer gets as flat as a Victoria's Secret model. Luckily I found two of those oldschool reusable beer caps that keep the bottle sealed while the juice gets infused.
According to some sources we should not exceed an infusion time of 30 to 45 minutes. We could also do some math and precision weighing to calcutate the amount of coumarin we add, but I prefer to keep it simple. Five stems in one beer shouldn't kill nobody...
According to my technical experimentations, the woodruff bundles can be reused for multiple drinks, as the coumarin is released steadily and therefore the flavour may even increase with every infusion.
For this experiment I used a 'Helles', a traditional bavarian beer that is actually quite enjoyable, as long as it is nicely chilled. In my case the 'Chiemseer'.
Like most beers in this style it is an easy drinking beer with very little to talk about. If it gets too warm the bitterness might get a bit out of hand, even though those beers rarely exceed 15 IBUs.
I also tried two other representatives of this style, but they were either very...unspectacular, or just not pleaseant at all. I guess my tastebuds might have had too much wheat beers latelely and didn't take the change very well. Maybe this style needs some time to get used to...
How does it taste?
Well, certainly not like the Chernobyl-green syrup abomination they call the 'Berliner Weiße'.
The woodruff flavour is very subtle but the light beer leaves plenty of room for it not to get buried.
In fact, the grassy aroma is exactly what this beer is missing from the lack of tasty hop acids. With hints of hay and a distinct vanilla smell, this beer went from mediocre to a culinary delight.
Conclusion
The Chiemseer Helles for itself is a kinda decent beer that I would rate at a 3/5.
The woodruff infused beer on the other hand is a very exciting twist that really exceeds my expectations.
Usually I'm not very excited about flavouring ingredients in beers, but this is something that I felt could work very well - and it did.
I would absolutely recommend you to try this out for yourself, even if you are not into beer experiments. It's a very subtle addition to our favourite drink's flavour profile that pairs very well with the hop's bitterness.
