How to make Viking heather beer

I was a bit of a worry to my father. He was a man who loved sport - especially football - while I loathed the playing field with a matching zeal. (My decision to go shopping instead of watching the 1966 World Cup Final was more than he could take). Also, and this was worse in his eyes, I preferred lager to "proper" beer. I just didn't like the heavy, sickly, bitter flavour. I think my father considered me to be a little effete, though this is not the word he might have chosen.

My lifelong aversion to all sport I put down to good sense, but my distaste for most beers may be due to my parents habit of providing me with a bedtime eggcupful of "Little Bricky" throughout my formative years. This noxious emanation from our local brewery - Brickwoods in Portsmouth – would, I think, be enough to put anyone off beer for life. I am still a bit of a lager drinker but have, at the behest of incredulous friends, made valiant attempts to appreciate the finer points of "proper" beers and have even started to make the stuff. I think I am finally recovering from all those Little Brickies.

Making beer is easy and quick - certainly easier and much quicker than wine-making. However you do need some more "kit", and big kit at that. With wine you are dealing with just a gallon, but beer can only, sensibly, be made in five gallon (25 litre) batches. Foremost is a saucepan capable of holding at least three gallons of liquid – I use a stockpot. You will also need a food-grade plastic fermentation bucket capable of holding 25 litres and either a 25 litre pressure barrel or an awful lot of beer bottles. In addition you will need a hydrometer and a cooking thermometer.

The following recipe comes from one of the most interesting people I know. His name is Alastair Wallace (a Scot, as if you needed telling). He is a delightful and engaging expert on ancient brewing techniques and breweries who can take a bit of stopping once you set him off on his favourite topic. I asked him if he could come up with an easy recipe using wild plants. He describes the recipe he sent me as a "metheglin" (a honey wine flavoured with herbs or spices) though I would suggest it is a honey beer, albeit one quite unrelated to the modern honey beers that contain very little honey indeed. It is more, as Alastair himself says, like the stuff the Vikings would have drunk.