Oldenlandia Ale - a trial

It just so happens that one of our friends is getting married soon, and the local popular practice is for the aspiring groom to survive a hazing on that day (usually thinly masqueraded as "gate-breaking" and intellectualised into having the meaning of sacrificing for the bride). One of the must-have options is to have the groom and groomsmen eat 4 food items, each representing the tastes of sourness, sweetness, bitterness and spiciness. Of course, the girls came up with the ingenious idea of dishing out a beer so bitter, they'll never forget it.

We all know that the bitterness from hops counter-balances the malty sweetness of the wort. Prior to the widespread use of hops, a bunch of other herbs have also been used for this same purpose. To the best of my knowledge though, no one has really tapped on the wealth of traditional Chinese herbs for this. Which is shame, since most traditional Chinese medicines taste so bitter, they make Stone Ruination look like sack mead.

And now, enter Oldenlandia diffusa. 


My mom used to make me suck on 1 of the leaves as a remedy for sore throat, and it really is bitter. I just can't describe it - it's a deep, intense bitterness that just lingers on your tongue for ages. So for our beer, we decided to use this stuff as one of the bittering additions.

Since it's going to be punishing to guzzle 5 gallons of this stuff, I decided to brew a base recipe and decant off 6 litres separately to use.

This is the recipe:

4kg Maris Otter
600g Carapils
100g Wheat
50g Acidulated Malt
1 tsp Burton Salts

Mashed at 64C for 1 hr, mashed out at 73C, then first wort hopped with 2oz Styrian Goldings until the wort started boiling. 6 litres was decanted off, and the remaining continued on its own hop schedule to make an ESB.

The 6 litres was placed on a stove top to complete the rest of the crazy hopping.

In all, I added 2oz CTZ (15% AA), 2oz Magnum (12% AA) and 2 sprigs of Oldenlandia diffusa to the boil, which continued for 90 mins to maximize hop extraction. At the end of it, we stole a small sample to taste, and holy crap!! Can't wait to see how the finished product ends up.

The wort was put into a small cube as per my usual no-chill routine, and cube hopped with 1oz of Nelson Sauvin and 1oz Cascade. It'll eventually be pitched with Nottingham yeast - stay tuned for the results! I'm just hoping that Oldenlandia doesn't contain any yeast-inhibiting compounds.

The final product was bottled for the groom and his henchmen, and I'm totally digging the label idea that wifey gave me! It's meant to imitate traditional bats of Chinese wine, except with the Chinese word for bitter on it. :)