Happy days! My new beer is done. This is a battle-tested recipe with lemons and ginger. This time I also had 10 g of fresh lemon balm in the seasoning infusion. This guy:
Works really great as a beer component, sharing to spotlight this herb with you all! There's a Wikipedia page that describes the many aromatic compounds it imparts. It's perennial (pic is from my garden), grows in a slightly invasive manner so you only need to plant very little to get enough for many brews. This was a warning :)
Another new twist was a helping of Weyermann spelt wheat malt. I expected the nutty spelt flavour from it, but the taste profile ended up so multi-faceted that I'll need more tastings to pinpoint it :D All in all, a distinctive flavour to this beer. Fermented to bone dry very smoothly.
Somehow, this plant gets mauled by local grasses in my garden. I've tried growing this weed many times, sourcing from different places - I had experience with mint relatives as being super invasive in other locations - but every year, it just doesn't stand to competition here. Savo biomes are mad.
Maybe it would help to make a mini bed just for it? Mine is in a bed and it's been easy and vigorous. We have pretty wild natural undergrowth too; it would be nice to have lemon balm here and there as fuck yous to mosquitoes (I'll wager the aroma is of the repelling kind) but if it doesn't compete, that might not be as easy...
These mad plants crawl everywhere. Sure, I have those bonsai trees I care for, but spending this much effort on a grass seems a bit mad. I'll try to grow it a winter garden. I think the edge of native grasses comes mainly from winter fungal activity under snow that they somehow benefit from; if I manage to exclude that from local system, things might change.