Anyone ever thought of a fraoch type beer with manuka?

[Richard Jack]

I keep walking past this really fragrant dwarf Manuka out the back at work. It's flowering like crazy at the moment and it makes me wonder about fraoch, gruit, spruce beer and so on and so forth. Anyone ever used / heard of using / pondered then dismissed as crazy / have an opinion on using manuka flowers and leaves in a brew in place of most or all hops?I understand that the "spruce" beer from wigram uses Manuka. I've also thought about some other native botanicals to mix with it. I use kawakawa in my gin, and that's pretty yummy. Also considered horopito, but not for very long.

I think the time to pick these things is now (nice array of seeds, flowers, and buds on the trees around auckland) so I just went ahead and butchered this tree yesterday morning when no one was around. I chopped off foot long tip sections covered in flowers, will string them up in bunches to dry while I ponder my next move... Any thoughts welcome.

I'm thinking about a scotch ale sort of thing, and then a fraoch sort of procedure when you don't chill after the boil, but drain the boiler into a vessel full of heather, and let it steep an hour.

[Ralph]

shipping is DG class 3 (flammable). A bunch of the normal sort of freight companies will take that, but most couriers wont

[Kelvin Faulk]

To be honest I never heard of using manuka flowers for brewing but it sounds interesting. I will definitely ask a good friend of mine if he ever used it. Where can I get such manuka flowers? I will check if I can get them via serenata flowers delivered online. I often order there and they have nearly all flowers you can imagine.