Hej, bryggarbro"der.

Dan Meyer (halfdan@aol.com) in #232 wrote about Pors (swedish, in English
Bog myrtle or Sweet gale). Dan claims that the scientific name is
Myrtus branbantica, while I think it's Myrica gale. (Both could perhaps
be true, there are other plants that have more than one sc. name.)
I don't know if it grows in america, though.

I'm from Sweden and are really most familiar to Pors as a spice for
bra"nnvin (Sw. for vodka/schnaps). Porsbra"nnvin is really a delicious
beverage. The Swedish state wine- and spirits company (AB Vin&Sprit,
that's really Wine&Spirits Inc.) makes a good Porsbra"nnvin but
really it should of course be made with hand-plucked spring Pors (and
preferably your own home- made spirit, illegal but popular here in the
north).

OK, over to mead, I've only tried a small sample-brew with Pors, but
as far as I can remember (my memory isn't so good, Pors…? 🙂 it was
fine. I will make a larger batch in the spring. Pors was together with
angelica root the most common bittering agent for beers and meads
before the hops where introduced in Northern Europe. A few years ago,
I don't know if still there was a commercial beer made here in Sweden
which had pors and angelica as a adjunct (TILL spetsat).

Carl von Linne, the Swedish 16th century botanist who did the modern
classification system for plants, commented pors beer in the diary
from his travels in Dalecarlia (Dalarna, province in mid-Sweden). He
said it made the drinkers furious and didn't recommend it although he
in general praised beer if well brewed as a most healthy drink.

Another nice spice to try is wormwood (malo"rt(sw), absinth (fr),
wermut (ge)). It's the main 'active ingredience' in absinth,
vermouth, bitters (the schnapps, not the ale), and in the traditional
Swedish bra"nnvin 'Besk'. It has a most distinct bitter taste, which
most people either love or hate. (For me it was love at first taste
when I tried Besk for the firs time). Old recipes for besk tell that
you should soak wormwood in pure bra"nnvin, warm it and set fire to it
at let it burn for a few seconds. (Then you drink it in quantities to
your pickled herring or whatever you eat.) For a less harsh taste,
just put the stalks in a bottle of vodka and soak for a few days. I
made a wormwood mead last year. Quite interesting. I still have most
of it left, it's not a drink you drink in large quantities and you
have to really like the wormwood taste. Wormwood also have quite a
reputation for narcotic effects, but I'll guess you'll have to consume
quite much to get any severe effects.

BTW, last Sunday I and a friend brewed 20 ltrs of plain mead (4kg of
cheap imported honey and some lemon) for a medieval style party next
Saturday. Aging? Bah. Just hoping it's not bubbling to much on
Saturday. We used some Norwegian 'Turbo' yeast (apparently ment for
fermenting mash for moon-shine) which according to the label should
ferment to maximum alcohol content in 3 days. (There was one bag with
chalk, minerals, vitamines, enzymes and such and one bag with 200 g dry
yeast, we didn't use all of it…). I hope it'll at least be
drinkable. The guests won't anyhow get anything else to drink, so…

Ha"lsningar

Stefan Karlsson

>"humla" (hops). However, I was startled to find an ingredient which was
>supposed to be the key ingredient in making the Vikings' Mead so potent and
>for causing them to go "berserk"… According to the book, they used an herb
>called "Pors" (pronounced like "Porsch"), which I can only translate as "bog
>myrtle" or "sweet gale". The scientific name is "Myrtus Branbantica", and it

Sweet Gale is used in old beer recipes. I have also seen a honey beer
recipe for it in an English herb book. If I can find the recipe (if I can
find the book?), I will post the recipe. A flurry of gale beer recipes
(sorry no honey) went through the Homebrew digest a while ago.

The homebrewers have several programs out for record keeping, but I don't
know if anny will serve your purpose. If you can find an issue of Zymurgy,
you can check out the ads.

dbmartin@acacia.itd.uts.edu.au (dave B Martin) writes:
dbmartin> Are there any other books you could recommend?

"Brewing Mead" by Papapazian and Gayre. Good book. Also, if you haven't
read it yet, "The Joy of Homebrewing" by Papazian. This one will get you
going from zero, and is fun to read, too.

dbmartin> Also. my forst ever batch of mead (one gallon) has been bubbling
dbmartin> away merrily for about a month now (bubbles thru the airlock
dbmartin> between three and ten times per minute depending on temprature).
dbmartin> How much longer can I expect it tio keep fermenting, and when
dbmartin> should it start to clear?

You're getting close. Sounds like your batch started about the same
time my current one did (15lbs honey to a 5 gallon batch!) and the
Specific Gravity is just now getting into the finishing range I was
looking for, so it goes into the keg this weekend (the yeast did
surprisingly well, 16% alcohol by my measuring, and there's still a
tiny bit of activity). I'd suggest waiting until you're hearing only
a couple glubs per hour or so, though.

half.dan@nashville.com (Dan Meyer) writes:
half.dan> Does anyone know of any good DOS or Windows based programs for
half.dan> keeping track of your mead, ingredients, fermentations,
half.dan> rackings, etc? Or ANY mead or wine brewing programs for
half.dan> IBM compatibles? (other than Wine Trakker or other wine
half.dan> inventory trackers)… Thanks,

I've been using FileMaker Pro, with a template I made myself for
keeping track of brewing in general. It's plenty flexible and you
can add new fields to it quite easily. I'm runing the mac version,
but from what I've seen, the Windows version is eseentially the same.
If you get it and would like the template I've been working from,
drop me a note, and I'll send it along.
davep@county.lmt.mn.org—————————-Dave Polaschek, software guy
AppleLink:LASERMAX————————-LaserMaster Corp.,7156 Shady Oak Rd,
ATTNet:6129439204————————————Eden Prairie, MN 55344 USA

In the last MLD Jon Pixley and Jonathan Corbet state some reasons why
not to post MLD to internet news.

This post is to add my agreement. It would be a shame if the digest
became cluttered with noise as HBD often does.

• toot

Dave Martin writes:
> As a complete novice, not just at mead but with any kind of
>brewing, I have absolutly no idea what I am doing at all. My only source
>of information is a book called "making mead" by acton and duncan, which
>was the only book my local brewshop had with anything about mead in it. Is
>this a goiod book? It seems to have been written quite a while ago, si
>ytechniques may have improvedin the years since it was published. Are
>there any other books you could recommend?

I own a copy of Acton & Duncan, and I think it's terrible. I use it mostly
for proportions of fruit, juice, spices, etc., in a brew. For general
brewing info, it's terrible, and on historical stuff, it's not infrequently
dead wrong. They're also very opinionated. If you have little brewing
experience, go out & buy a copy of Charlie Papazian's _The New Complete Joy
of Homebrewing_. He only has a small chapter on mead, but it's one of the
best sources of general brewing how-to's for the novice. The rest of us
here can give you recipes.

> Also. my forst ever batch of mead (one gallon) has been bubbling
>away merrily for about a month now (bubbles thru the airlock between three
>and ten times per minute depending on temprature). How much longer can I
>expect it tio keep fermenting, and when should it start to clear (\i
>assume it doesn't stay cloudy for ever). Also when should I rack it? The
>book says to rack it after fermentation is complete (i am aiming for a dry
>mead), but several recipes i have seen in the digest seem to say that it
>should be racked several times during the fermentation. Any ideas??

You can rack anything anytime you want. You'll lose a little each time you
do so, so here's what I do: When brewing with fruit, rack after about 2-3
weeks, when the fermentation slows down (so the fruit doesn't go bad in
there). If you get a *lot* of trub (that's the junk sedimenting on the
bottom), rack it to get it away from the dead yeast. You don't have to do
it very often. I only worry about it if there's fruit involved, or if
there's a lot of sediment.

> P.S excuse the apalling formatting of this.. i'm in at uni and the
>keyboards don't work so good (all the unimportant keys like <enter> ceased
>to function many years ago)

I *hate* it when that happens. 🙂

• – Joyce

We have a small commercial winery up here and we make mead. We are having
a strange problem and anyone who can shed some light (if it works) can
have a bottle for free! Our latest batch has just been started but the
yeast seems to be sitting on top of the vats, feeding just enough to
create foam, and then stopping, we can not seem to get it down into the
honey mix. This is the first time we have had this problem, so if any of
you out there have the solution, please please, please!!! WRITE
ME……Thanks, reply to the digest or contact me at Skyclad@uvvm.uvic.ca.

Dave Meyer posted a fascinating article about Pors/Sweet Gale:

Sweet Gale or Bog Myrtle is not exactly a 'secret' ingredient,
but it is obscure. I had no idea that it had any psychoactive
properties (but I am willing to learn ;).

I've mostly seen Sweet Gale mentioned as a bittering agent for
beer. It is typically mentioned as an ingredient in 'Groot',
the mixture of herbs used to flavour beer before hops came
to predominate. I've heard mention of it's use in both
continental europe (see Gayr's 'Wassail! In Mazers of Mead'),
and in Norway (a posting to rec.crafts.homebrewing or the
digest…I could dig it up). In addition, it is mentioned
as an ingredient in groot (along with yarrow and wild rosemary)
in 'Old British Beers and how to brew them'.

What the hell, here's the old net postings:

We have found the following source for those of you who have been looking for
sweet gale seeds to brew Pierre Rajotte's Belgian Ale recipe:

Desjardins Herboriste
3303 Ste. Catherine St. E.
Montreal, Quebec H1W 2C5
Tel: (514) 523-4860

Pierre says 250 grams is $3.56 plus shipping (Canadian dollars I assume). He
also says 250 grams is more than a lifetime supply. The recipe for Santa
Claus' Magic Potion calls for 1 gram of seeds.

James

************************************************************************

hello all,
Daniel mentioned that he was thinking of brewing in an old/ancient
way. I thought I'd send this extract in, for it's general
interest:
Extracted without permission from Corran's History of Brewing:

….stuff about old brewing methods deleted…..(rick C.)

Hops and Flavouring

The mixture of herbs known as gruit was extensively used in Scandinavia, just as
it was further south. The most important ingredient, certainly in Norway, was
the bog myrtle. Evidently the ale was potent when bog myrtle was added, and it
was often used in addition to hops. Hypericum perforatum, St John's wort, was
also used, as was yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Tansy and wormwood are also
mentioned. Pine roots and spruce chippings might sometimes be added to prevent
the ale from turning sour. There are further references to caraway, pepper and
even potato leaves and tobacco ('but that kind of ale was no good – it made them
sick'). Nordland considers that bog myrtle may still be used in western Norway.
Hops might be put in a bag and boiled in the wort, which saved subsequent
straining, or they might be strained off after boiling, for which purpose there
were hop strainers of basket work, vegetable fibres or hair, or even perforated
wooden boxes. Some indeed were small coopered vessels.

*************************************************************************

I had no idea that it was so potent. A net posting from some
time ago said that bog myrtle grows in North America (in
Canada?). I'll have to get a book with pictures of the plant
so I can look for it (I've been meaning to do so for a while
now, but this is some REAL incentive!).

I'd be VERY interested in a copy of the booklet when it's
done, and would be happy to help with any info that I can.
(I made a trip to Scandinavia last summer to see Viking
stuff, got to drink some mead in Uppsala and in Stockholm,
but no time to gather herbs).

Cheers, Rick C.

Dave Martin asks a couple more questions:

re: 'Making Mead', Acton and Duncan

A good book, but I don't agree with everything they
have to say. They're really big on using sulphites,
(and down on pasturization) while I've never liked the
results. The other thing that bothers me is their
insistance that mead be judged by the same standards
as wine, hence their emphasis on the addition of acid
blend, grape tannin, etc. I prefer to approach mead
without preconceptions as to what constitutes 'balance'
etc. They assert that mead should taste like a fine
white wine. I'm not crazy about grape wines, so I
have a different philosophy. Different strokes.

Papazian has a book on mead making as well (don't know
the exact title). It may describe more 'state-of-the
art' technique. Most of my technique has been gathered
from various books, articles, and more than anything,
discussions in Newsgroups/digests.

re: racking

I make melomels mostly, so I usually rack after a week
or so, since the fruit will contribute a significant
sediment. I then add pectin enzyme (if needed), which
will cause another sediment to be thrown. When the
mead has cleared (say 2 or 3 weeks) I'll rack again.
Now racking will be less frequent, since most of the
sediment has been removed. It will depend mostly
on how well the mead clears. If there's significant
sendiment, I try not to let the mead sit on it too long.
I racked two meads last night (second rackings). They
are now mostly clear, though still fermenting slowly.
I'll probably rack them again in a few months, when the
fermentation is complete, then again some time later
when I bottle.

Hope this helps, Rick C.

Hej fellow brewers!

I'm overwhelmed by all the folks around the world who responded to my

posting on the Old Swedish Mead book I'm translating to English! Several
folks gave helpful suggestions and insight on the ingredient "pors" ("Myrtus
brabantica"?), and I'll pass on their insights to you:

>"… As for Pors, I have heard of 'bog myrtle' being used in
Scottish brewing before hops was introduced. I have also heard it called
"sweet willow"…"

>"Sweet Gale, or Bog Myrtle was an important component of the pre-hops
"gruits" for spicing beer and other fermented beverages…"

>"Sweet Gale was a popular ingredient in 'Gruit', a blend of herbs used in
beer before hops became popular. Most of these references have also talked
about Sweet Gale adding extra kick as well…"

>"Myrica gale (in the wax myrtle family – Myricaceae) is a boreal species
common to northern latitudes in both the eastern and western hemispheres.
Some botanists treat this single somewhat variable species as several
distinct species (thus your different scientific name). It's all pretty much
the same animal. Myrica gale occurs in the Southern Appalachians (as far
south as Henderson County, NC, where it is exceedingly rare in bogs). In the
mtns of West Virginia you will find it occurring in fairly large numbers in
such areas as Dolly Sods in Monongahela National Forest. It occurs almost
continuously across boreal Canada and Alaska, northern Japan and adjacent
Russia, and Scandanavia and northern Europe. It was a common ingredient in
the gruits of early ales, the use of which was displaced by the introduction
of hops…"

>"Myrtles comprise about 16 species of evergreen shrubs or small trees of
the genus Myrtus in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. All but two species, one
in southern Europe and one in Africa, are native
to Florida and the West Indies. Leaves of myrtles are typically a shiny blue
green and strongly scented when crushed; the flowers, bark, and berries are
also fragrant, and myrtle has been used in perfumery. The ancient Greeks
considered myrtle sacred to the goddess Aphrodite and used it in festivals.
The myrtle they used is M. communis, believed native to western Asia but
grown for so long in the Mediterranean region and in southwestern Europe that
its original range is uncertain. It grows to 4.5 m (15 ft) high, with dense,
bushy foliage and solitary or few-blossomed clusters of white or pinkish
flowers with many stamens. Each flower develops into a blue-black berry with
the sepals (calyx) of the flower persisting at its top. The term myrtle is
also applied to a number of other unrelated plants, including the crape
myrtle, Lagerstroemia indica (see LOOSESTRIFE); the PERIWINKLE, or running
myrtle, Vinca minor; the sand myrtle, Leiophyllum buxifolium, an evergreen
shrub with leathery leaves and pinkish flowers; and the southern BAYBERRY, or
wax myrtle, Myrica cerifera…but no mentions of MYRTUS BRABANTICA per se,
nor "bog myrtle" or "sweet gale"….

I'll continue some more replies in another note… Dan Meyer

Here's some more of the replies I got on Old Swedish Pors Mead…

>"… from Odd Nordland's _Brewing and Beer Tradition on Norway_ … note
that the quotations come from questionaires filled out by Norwegians about
their knowledge and recollection of old brewing practices:

The important part played by the grut of Central Europe … has
already been discussed From the fourteenth to the seventeenth
century, the most important ingredient of this mixture of dried

leaves and spices was bog myrtle, Myrica gale, which will here also be
referred to as pors [presumably the Norwegian name].

The bog myrtle was an important plant in medieval Norway, being
mentioned as early as in fourteenth-century laws. … rent for
farms could be paid in bog myrtle …

… bog myrtle occurs as one of the plants that could be used
for flavouring ale: `To add a strong flavour to the ale, and to
make it heady, pors was put into it. … It was gathered in
autumn, and the leaves were also taken.' `When this plant was
used, the ale was strong. It went to one's head. They spoke of
having a "Christmas head".'

… In northern Hordaland, small quantities of pors were added to
the Christmas ale until the turn of the century.

… `The ale was flavoured with hops mixed with pors. It was
slightly yellowish, and had a fresh, sweet taste. It was said
locally that when one drank much of it, it was strongly
intoxicating, with unpleasant after-effects.'

That bog myrtle produces a special effect when added to ale is
… well documented in our material, and in earlier sources …
Linnaeus … mention[s] the especially intoxicating effects …

… Does bog myrtle possess the properties that were once ascribed to

it? … chemical analysis has revealed no such properties.

[One writer] is inclined to believe that there must be some

substance in the bog myrtle that has the effect described. But he is
also open to the suggestion that the belief in a special effect gave
rise to an increased consumption [that] produced effects of

the kind described… The solution of these problems would …
require a complicated analysis, and as it is of little practical
value to find the cause of the alleged headaches of bygone ages,
the question will probably remain unsolved.

It is not clear from this material what part(s) of the plant were
used, except for the mention that "the leaves were also taken." He
does refer at one point to the shape of the fruit of the plant, so we
might assume that this is what was used. Certainly, Rajotte refers to
the seeds as the flavoring agent in his Santa's Magic Potion. In the
American herbal, the most closely related plant is the bayberry, from
which the twigs and roots seem to be used…"

> …"Viking Age" brewing used dolomite as a yeast nutrient…
Anybody have any insights on "dolomite"??

I hope this will help those of you who are interested in finding Bog Myrtle
for your own meads! I'll try to get the book finished in the next few months
and let you know as soon as I find a publisher to publish it! Let me know if
anyone has any more info or questions on Pors or Bog Myrtle! Skoal!

Dan Meyer
(halfdan@aol.com)