brewing with rosemary and mint!

Hey all,

Although I have read the forums of this site for months now this is my first post. I have an American Hefeweisen recipe and I want to add rosemary and mint to it. Problem is I can't find someone previously doing it so if anyone has used mint and/or rosemary in a beer before can you please give insight? I tend to add flavors more than most because I like it being prominent. I am using a 5 gal recipe. Thank you!

I'd try boiling it down for a bit (getting all the oils out) and then freezing or cold crashing the concoction. Skim off anything weird on top, filter and then taste. If u feel its strong enough, pitch to secondary or during bottling.

Ive also seen some people soaking it in vodka or grain, freezing it, skimming oils off the top and pitching that into secondary.

I used a french variety of mint, called banana mint (yes it has a hint of banana) in a Biere de Garde. Needless to say, the beer came out really really weird. I'm still not sure if it was the herbs or the the T-58 femented too warm, or possibly a combination of the two, but it took alomst a whole year before the beer became drinkable and even then it was still strange. I think the difficult thing with herbs is trying to extract that aroma you smell (essential oils) without extracting all of the chlorophyl, plant waxes and tannins that can make it taste very strange. Maybe working with pure essential oils (in very small amounts) is the way to go? Just some things I've been thinking about! Good luck with your brew!!!

Thank you for your input! I would have just thrown in secondary and probably ruined the beer. I'm curious to see how it would taste just with the oils so I may throw a mint leaf into a bottle and see what weirdness comes from it.

I used 6g fresh rosemary at flameout and another 16g as a dry-hop in a Black IPAish beer I made, along with a little sage and plenty of CTZ. The rosemary is very prominent. The beer is decent on its own, but is a great food beer. For your beer, you'd need lower levels of rosemary since you don't have the dark grains to compete with. I don't think throwing the mint into secondary would ruin anything, as long as you didn't add so much it tasted like mouthwash.