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10 best botanical beers
Get leafy with our selection of plant-infused beers
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Your support makes all the difference.You may have noticed an affliction developing among brewers, which we call “adjunctivitis”, and is the habit of putting ingredients other than malted barley, hops, yeast and water into their beers. Fruits, roots, flowers and more are all being used to appeal to a beer audience desperate for new flavours. Despite their recent rise in popularity, using brewing additions – known as adjuncts – is nothing new. Before hops became the brewing flavour of choice, all manner of wild herbs and spices went into ales (these hop-less drinks were known as “gruit”) while many established styles also contain extras – Belgian witbiers, for example feature orange and coriander seed while Trappist ales have regularly featured spices.
Used badly, adjuncts can ruin perfectly good beers. But get them right and whole new flavour profiles are opened up. Sometimes the effects are obvious, with the adjunct’s flavour being the most prominent; whereas in other beers the results are more subtle, shifting the beer in a new direction without it being immediately obvious which ingredient is responsible.
For this list we’ve ignored the common fruit flavours and have instead sought beers with more unusual botanical ingredients. If you’re looking for a new beer drinking experience, then try a few of these and you too might succumb to a dose of adjunctivitis…
Siren, Yu Lu, 3.6%: £1.90 for a 330ml bottle, Siren
Tea seems quite a natural choice of beer addition to us: like hops, the different varieties provide a range of flavour characteristics, along with varying degrees of bitterness and tannins that help dry out the beer to a refreshing crispness. Siren’s Yu Lu is among the best, with earl grey being the chosen leaf, along with some lemon zest to further ramp up the refreshment. It’s a modern, light pale ale with delicate hopping and is graced by some fine floral notes from the earl grey tea.
Tomos a Lilford, Rosemary, 5%: £25.50 for 12 x 500ml bottles, Discover Delicious
Welsh brewers Rolant Tomos and Rob Lilford have made botanical beers their speciality, with ales featuring yerba mate, rose petals and even seaweed in their repertoire. Our favourite of their output uses locally sourced wild rosemary, an ingredient that’s tricky to brew with due to varying levels of natural oils depending on when it’s picked. The herb addition is instantly obvious from the aroma and provides flavours that seem like they could be from an amazing new hop discovery – distinctively of rosemary but with an almost lemony pungency that is surprisingly well suited to beer.
To Ol, Frostbite, 6%: £3.49 for a 330ml bottle, Beer Hawk
Seeing as some hops add a pine flavour to beers we would expect pine or spruce to feature more as a brewing adjunct. Williams Brothers produce an excellent spruce infused ale “Nollaig“ every Christmas while Danish experimentalists To Øl opt for pine in this festive ale. The result is a natural twist on a pithy American pale ale that’s full of grass, pine and orange flavours (Frost Bite also contains orange peel) and a satisfying bitterness. A refreshing beer that isn’t just for Christmas…
HaandBryggereit, Norwegian Wood, 6.5%: £3.99 for a 500ml bottle, Beer Hawk
Scandinavia has a history of brewing beer with juniper, including Finnish Sahti and traditional Norwegian farm-brewed ales which would include malt kilned by fire and spiced with juniper berries. It’s this smokey, spicy brew that has provided the inspiration for HaandBryggereit, which also includes citrus and herb flavours in a mature tasting, toasty brew. The smoke is subtly done, simply accentuating some woody notes and gently leading the palette to a moreish dry finish.
Brouwerij de Kazematten, The Wipers Times 14, 6.2%: £2.49 for a 330ml bottle, Beer Hawk
Named after the First World War “trench gazette” produced in Ypres, Belgium, The Wipers Times is brewed with local “blessed thistle”, as depicted in the newspaper’s masthead. The thistle’s seeds (and a few other secret additions) help give this Belgian blonde ale a subtle herbal quality along with sweet, soft fruit flavours and a smooth, creamy body.
Gyle 59, Elderberry Stout, 7.3%: £3.25 for a 500ml bottle, gyle59.co.uk
Every autumn, the Gyle 59 team roam their local Dorset hedgerows to plunder the wild elderberries that go into this rich stout (in spring, they’re gloved-up and picking nettles for an equally tasty IPA). It’s a boozy beast that has been cask matured for a minimum of six months and bottle conditioned, so it’s suitably rammed with flavour. Besides the chocolatey and toasty roasted malts you’ll also notice some dry spicy and jammy qualities from the tannin rich berries.
Stone Angel Medieval Ale, 5.2%: £2.99 for a 500ml bottle, stone-angel.com
There aren’t many brewers who attempt gruit style ales, so hats off to David McQueen of Stone Angel for making one as a commercial venture. Brewed at Wiltshire’s Kettlesmith brewery it contains 20 ingredients including yarrow, broom, bog myrtle and hyssop, along with a few hops to make it more suited to modern beer drinkers’ palettes. You would be hard pushed to recognise any one ingredient, but that’s not the point – instead you get a complex amber ale with floral and spicy aromatics, subtly shifting herbal notes and a natural sweetness.
Wild Beer Co, Redwood, 5.8%: £3.59 for a 330ml bottle, Beer Hawk
We couldn’t run this list without featuring something from Somerset’s Wild Beer Co, who would consider almost anything to go into one of their amazing beers. The autumnal Redwood gets the nod, a barrel aged beauty featuring characterful funky yeasts and rich hedgerow fruit flavours that are reminiscent of the wild-fermented sour beers of Belgium. The seasonal ingredients include sloes, blackberries and rosehips, all of which merge together with a bitter and tannic richness (further enhanced by the flavours from the wood barrels) and some jammy fruit goodness.
Twisted Barrel Ale, Best of a Midlands Mild, 3.5%: £2.50 for a 330ml bottle, Eebria
Vanilla is a not uncommon addition to dark ales: the ice cream flavours accentuate any creaminess in the beer while the spicy notes can give the impression of barrel ageing. Making it work in a light mild is more challenging than dipping a few pods into a stronger, more robust stout, but Twisted Barrel have managed it with aplomb. That creamy vanilla is apparent in the aroma, while the beer itself is smooth with comforting dry, roasted malt flavours and layers of complexity you rarely find in one so mild.
The White Hag, The Púca Berry Hibiscus & Ginger, 3.5%: £2.59 for a 330ml can, Honest Brew
Sour beers make good bases for flavour experiments and Irish outfit The White Hag have gone to town tarting up this deep pink brew. It’s a “dry hopped lemon sour” with berry hibiscus and ginger, and has a tooth-shuddering sharpness. That combination of ingredients creates a strong aroma and initial flavour of raspberries with loads of lemon and red currant sharpness joining in. We can’t specifically claim to spot the ginger but there’s every chance it has helped to max out those other fruit flavours.
Verdict: botanical beers
We think rosemary deserves wider use among brewers, so recommend you try out Tomos a Lilford’s fine beer, but for an expertly crafted modern ale with a leafy twist Siren’s Yu Lu comes out on top.