Brewing with wormwood

[DallasSVT]

Has anyone tried brewing with wormwood?
How much do i need?
When to put in boil?

[Fast_Eddy]

I found one recipe pretty quickly..

http://www.beertools.com/html/recipe.php?view=2117


I also found a long thread discussing the safety of wormwood.

[brewmonkey]

Check out Stephen Buhners "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers", he covers wormwood in there.

IMHO, I would steer clear of using it in anything. I do believe I have read in several places that it is not approved for internal use by the FDA. While we do have other herbs on the market in the same boat, they are not considered psychotropic and potentially dangerous. Wormwood has the potential when misused to cause heart failure.

[YamahaXS]

funny coincidence.

I was just talking to my bud who works at the LHBS. He brewed an old style beer, a GRUTE, without any hops. He used wormwood and another wood, I think yarrow. hopefully I will get to try some. :)

[b3s]

Originally posted by brewmonkey
Check out Stephen Buhners "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers", he covers wormwood in there.

IMHO, I would steer clear of using it in anything. I do believe I have read in several places that it is not approved for internal use by the FDA. While we do have other herbs on the market in the same boat, they are not considered psychotropic and potentially dangerous. Wormwood has the potential when misused to cause heart failure.

the EU just recently (i.e. in the past 12-months) has re-approved the creation of absinthe with wormwood based on some studies.

[mortong]

It was used in Absinthe for a long time, and as B3S said, it's been reapproved. Hey, it worked for Van Gogh, it'll work for me. Oh wait... ;o)

I think it's worth a try, and I hope to do it sometime. But be careful. Good luck.

[Herb Ninja]

I thought Thujone, the active ingredient in woomwood, was a neurotoxin... That doesn't mean its gonna kill you in minature amounts but that does mean id steer clear of it personally. Just note that high amounts of thujone can cause death, but then again so can ethanol. :p

[brewmonkey]

Originally posted by mortong
It was used in Absinthe for a long time, and as B3S said, it's been reapproved. Hey, it worked for Van Gogh, it'll work for me. Oh wait... ;o)

I think it's worth a try, and I hope to do it sometime. But be careful. Good luck.

It HAS NOT been approved for use in this country. That is the EU and a totally different standard.

While it has not been approved for internal use in this country it is available. If you use this in your beer you may be liable if others drink this product. Drink it yourself and face the risks.

[barley ben]

OK, I was hoping someone else would ask before me but I guess I'm the only one that has no clue what wormwood is. Someone want to tell me.

[Payson]

Recipes for absinthe are readily available online. I made some and true to form, it's very unpalatable. It's quite a novelty though. All of the current literature I've seen regarding thujone though seems to agree that it's "psychoactive" properties are negligible at best. What what described in Van Gogh's day as "absintheism" was more likely what we would call alcoholism today. Think about it, the alcohol content of absinthe is pretty high so if it's quaffed down at streetside cafes at noon it's a pretty good assumption you'll catch a buzz. The nervous onlooker would assume there was something much more henious at work which led to its unfounded bad rap today. Worldwide, restrictions are being lifted and eased due to jumping to erroneous conclusions about it back in the day.

[Beerconnoisseur]

Originally posted by brewmonkey
It HAS NOT been approved for use in this country. That is the EU and a totally different standard.

While it has not been approved for internal use in this country it is available. If you use this in your beer you may be liable if others drink this product. Drink it yourself and face the risks.

This is excellent advice. I would add that Joe & Dennis Fisher (in The Homebrewer's Garden, p. 78) include Wormwood in their list of dubious brewing herbs. The exact text reads: "Danger: Poisonous if taken internally. Causes convulsions in large doses. Central nervous system poison."

They also list the following herbs... Sweet Gale/Bog Myrtle, Comfrey, Mugwort, Pennyroyal, Tansy, and Thorn Apple. Angelica is included as well, although it is commonly used as a flavoring in gin.

[elvis_f_christ]

poison or not, wormwood tastes really really bad. it's a kind of sickening bitterness. i would keep it far away from my brews for reasons of taste.

[davesarman]

Speaking of offbeat ingredients, the following just came in the monthly Realbeer newsletter:

HOMEBREWER MAKES BEER WITH CICADAS
Steve Marler, an Arlington, Va., homebrewer has made a 10-gallon batch of beer that includes smoked cicadas as an ingredient, and he plans to spend the next 17 years enjoying the beer. "The hops will probably hide any cicada flavor," he told the Washington Post before brewing the beer. "Totally hysterical ... you have to assume the determined brewer will follow through
with any brewing threat, no matter how outrageous," was the reaction of Randy Mosher, author of the newly released "Radical Brewing," which is packed with offbeat recipes. This was one he missed. Marler's recipe is something of a tribute to the Brood X 17-year cicada that emerged in May. The base beer is a barley wine and targeted it to 21 Plato (thus the final beer will be about
10.3% alcohol by volume) because the cicada Brood X will emerge again in 2021.
http://www.realbeer.com/news/articles/news-002244.php