Stroud Brewery's seasonal spring ale – made with a zingy organic ingredient – is back on tap this spring, following a successful foraging trip earlier this month.
Bringing a historic botanical note to its tasty organic beer, Stinger is a 4.2 per cent ABV traditional pale ale infused with stinging nettles, harvested by the Stroud Brewery team from Slad Farm.
Nettles used to be a common ingredient in beer before hops were introduced to Britain in 1400 AD. Brewers would make a mix of bitter herbs, flowers and roots, called gruit, to flavour their ales, with sage, dandelion, burdock, mugwort, yarrow and stinging nettles often featuring.
Paying homage to this bygone tradition, Stroud Brewery's founder Greg Pilley and his team headed out in search of nettles to add to their brew, collecting 40 kilograms of fresh, organic young nettle leaves to create this special, seasonal beer.
Greg said: 'The nettles add a fresh vegetal taste to the beer along with a zing originating from the citric acid that’s contained in the stinging part of the leaf.
'But there’s no problem with drinking it – the sting doesn’t get transferred to the beer! The nettles break down when they’re boiled and the sting is neutralised, so the flavour remains: more zing, no sting.'
The nettle leaves are added with the hops towards the end of the boiling stage and sieved out at the end, ready to give to local allotment holders to use as fertiliser.
Stinger, which is a collaboration with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage, will be on draught at Stroud Brewery's taproom and in cans available to mail order from its website from June 2025.
Once the first batch is drunk, there's enough nettles left for two more brews this year – so be sure to try a pint or two before it runs out!
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