So Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall posted this as a recipe for nettle beer on his web site (address below) and I'm in the process of preparing it now (cooling the "tea") so thought I would post it here and see if anyone has any other ideas for nettle beer/wine. It's pretty basic, but I never thought of nettles as anything other than a tea / fried greens plant (apart from the fact that they are seriously painful if touched the wrong way). I toyed with the idea of using honey instead of casting sugar, but my wife impressed on me the wisdom of trying it "his way" before I started tampering with it.

Here's the recipe (it's from the UK, so note measurement differences):

Ingredients:
6 litres water
A small carrier bag of nettle tops, washed
Juice of 1 lemon, strained
Juice of 1 orange, strained
750g caster sugar
30g cream of tartar
5g yeast

Method: How to make nettle ale
1. Bring the water to the boil in a large pan.
2. Add nettles, stir, then remove the pan from the heat and leave to infuse for at least an hour until it is at
blood temperature.
3. Carefully - you might want to enlist a helper at this point - strain the nettle liquid through a colander
lined with a large piece of unbleached muslin into a large brewing bucket or pan. Once the liquid has
filtered through, squeeze the muslin to get the maximum amount of liquid into the bucket.
4. Gradually add the sugar, stirring constantly to ensure it is thoroughly dissolved, then add the cream of
tartar, and lemon and orange juice.
5. Finally, once the mixture is tepid, stir in the yeast. Cover and leave for 2-3 days in a warm place, until
it's obviously fermenting.
6. Remove any scum which has risen to the top in fermentation and siphon the beer into sterilised bottles
and seal with corks.
7. Leave for at least a couple more days or up to a month before drinking.


www.channel4.com/food/reci...e_p_1.html