- Parts used: Branches and blue-black berries (actually seed cones).
- Aroma & taste: Pleasant, bitter-sweet aroma which reminds of gin.
Berries are sweet, with a hint of pine and turpentine. They produce a
slight burning sensation in the mouth. - Brewing method: Juniper ale and beer is the traditional brew
of the Scandinavian countries: Norway, Finland and Sweden. There
are seven methods used in these countries for brewing juniper ale:
boiled mash and wort, boiled mash and wort with repeated pourings,
the wort boiled but not the mash, mash and some of wort boiled, mash
boiled but not the wort, some wort boiled but not the mash, and neither
mash nor wort boiled (this is known as raw ale).
Juniper is a shrub or small tree, very variable but often found as a low spreading shrub
but occasionally reaching 10m / 30ft tall. Common Juniper has needle-like leaves in
whorls of three; the leaves are green, with a single white stomatal band on the inner
surface. It is dioecious, with separate male and female plants.
The seed cones are berry-like, green ripening in 18 months to purple-black with a blue
waxy coating; they are spherical, 10mm / ¼in in diameter, and usually have three
(occasionally six) fused scales, each scale with a single seed. Juniper berries
take two or three years to ripen, so that blue and green berries occur
on the same plant. Only the blue, ripe berries are here picked. When
collected in baskets or sacks, they are laid out on shelves to dry
a little, during which process they lose some of the blue bloom
and develop the blackish colour seen commercially.
In traditional brewing in Norway, twigs of juniperus communis
were used as a strainer through which the hot wort was filterred.
This process also allowed some of the colour and taste of the
Juniper to be transfered to the beer.
