Considering a true ale (no hops)

First, my impression is that the recipes forum is the place to post recipes known to be good. This one is still in its formative stage.

Anyway, we have home-grown sage, and weather-wise the jig is almost up for the plant. I am pondering a recipe that may be along the lines of a Belgian Strong Dark Ale. I had a nice success with a Barleywine with rosemary and thought this could be a nice adventure, the uncharted territories being both sage and zero hops. Clearly, this may not be to the taste of the majority of folks, but I'm interested in experimenting in this direction so why not.

Buhner's "Sacred Herbal and Healing Beers" actually has a few historical recipes for sage ales, both with and without hops. I'm wondering how this will go down since I'm so programmed for hops. The rosemary barleywine was 34 IBU.

The fresh sage is obviously aromatic, with a bitter-ish finish. I suppose that sage added early on in the boil would do the "bittering" job, but I think I'll add in two steps, early and late, to try to get enough bittering along with presence in the aroma.

Here's the current draft of the recipe (all grain):

5 gallon batch.

Grains:
Marris Otter 12 pounds
Special B 4 pounds
Flaked Barley 1 pound

Extras:
Raw Buckwheat Honey 2 pounds

Sage:
majority at 60 minutes, then another shot at 10 minutes.

Yeast:
Brett/wild - undecided

BrewCipher specs:
OG=1.095, ABV=12.4%, SRM=47

Recipe comments:
> the rosemary barleywine had 2 pounds of Special B, but was essentially drowned out by the alcohol (~15%) and rosemary. I'd also like to get the plum flavor showing up.
>flaked barley for head without introducing a non-barley entity (e.g., oats).
>I used this raw buckwheat honey before. It adds some subtle complexity, although it would be totally wrong for a clean beer like a pilsener, etc.
>looking at the Brett / wild yeast for the tartness and alcohol tolerance.

So there it is as of Saturday morning. I'm still wondering about the grain bill in terms of whether or not it will add it's share of some of the bitterness, but I don't want to go the way of a roasted barley.

Anyway, there it is. Have any of you tried going down this road before? Any disasters you can foresee?

Many thanks and cheers!

 

I'm going to take the tea route that Eriktheipaman mentioned. I have sage, but I don't have the other types of herbs (except for hops). I see a number of recipes that use only sage, but that doesn't mean they're enjoyable!

But first, it's time to bottle the batch of Averagely Perfect American Stout...

Cheers!