Brewing with Japanese Knotweed - Apple and Knotweed Cider Recipe
Now I'm not quite sure how but I'm finding myself making what can only be described as an 'experimental brew' It's a long story, I'll try and keep it short as for most people reading this it'll be the recipe and photos they're most interested in.
A few weeks ago I ordered myself a polypin of Hepworth Iron Horse from Matt of BeerMatt, when delivering the polypin he spotted my first ever homebrew attempt (a youngs beginners kit) and asked my wife (I was out at the time) if I'd be interested in brewing with Japeneese Knotweed. After exchanging a few tweets and emails I found myself in possession of a bag of Knotweed from the guys at Phlorum and a mission to experiment.
If you don't know about Knotweed it's a proper invasive species causing all kinds of problems.
Being that the knotweed has been used in food as a substitute for rhubarb I thought a cider might be a good idea. Being completely the wrong time of year to make a cider I went the 'turbo cider' route using cheap and cheerful cloudy cider from Lidl.
This experiment is still very much 'in-progress at the moment but below is some more details of the ingredients and photo's along the way!
Recipe
600G of Cooking Apples
400G of Japaneese Knotweed
I boiled this in water until I got a litre
In the demijohn I added a cup of stewed cold tea, the litre of boiled apple and knotweed and two litre of cloudy pure apple juice and a sachet of Young's Wine Yeast, we'll see how we get on.
