Hey, i have so much lavender at my house. a lavender IPA or pale ale is getting my mouse watering. anyone use lavender in beer before? do you use the greens or the flowers? i assume the greens, but hey. any quantities? and dry hop, i assume?
I've brewed a blueberry lavender beer before, added dried flowers I believe to the secondary with the blueberries will have to check my notes on the amount and form we used.I have a pic somewhere too.
I used dried lavender buds in a beer once. 1g at flameout 5g batch of saison that had a little bit of other spicing as well, but the lavender came through loud and clear. Actually had to sit on it for about 4-5 months for the "fancy soap" smell to die down. You could try the greens, but I know that in cooking, you use the flower buds. A little definitely goes a long way. Buy a jar of Herbes de Provence and see how little lavender is in there, but then cook with it and it's the dominant flavor.
good to know those quantities. i have an event for which i'm making it. it's due October. i'll use a tiny amount to accent the IPA i'm making.
I'd do a alky soak. Then pull a sampling volume of beer, add a small volume of extract to taste, and last scale for the main batch.
Yeah, lavender is potent - contains a number of chemicals including linalool - already contained in hops, but in much more concentrated doses. Unfortunately, this does mean you won't use much of your overwhelming supply. And for the record, I used about a 1/2 tsp for a 5 gallon batch of my champagne beer and that was still potent, but not smack your nose off potent.
