#foraging uk

Dandelion & White Dead Nettle Ale

While on my daily exercise walking Peggy across the Cawood countryside the other day I noticed that there were a lot of Dandelions and White Dead Nettles on the lane verges. Being the homebrewer I am I couldn’t resist trying a few of the flowers, once I’d identified them properly of course. The flavours were interesting and quite palatable. The Dandelions sweet and floral, the White Dead Nettles a kind of floral green hazelnut flavour. So of course I started looking up recipes. There was nothing brewing-wise about the White Dead Nettles but plenty of Dandelion wine recipes. Now I’ve given up on making wine as I just don’t like it and I can’t get any local honey to do Mead at the moment so my initial idea was to do a kind of very low ABV tonic drink based on the processes of creating a wine but using my wild yeast starter that I had for earlier in the month.

The next day me and my daughter went out for our walk and collected about 9L worth in a bucket, they were mainly dandelions with about one quarter being the White Dead Nettle tops.

Once home we removed all the flowers from the Dead Nettles and petals from the Dandelion. My daughter did it for a while before getting bored, but it didn't take too long, I did end up with rather yellow fingers though. I then boiled 4.5L of water and pour it over them, in hindsight 5-6L would have been better. I added 1 tsp of citric acid, sealed the lid and left to steep for 3 days.

The next step was to add the rind and juice of one lemon and 300g of golden granulated sugar, mix it all together and bring to the boil.

The aroma was sweet, fresh, floral and citrusy so I also decided to chuck in 5g of Opus hop pellets and boil it for 10 minutes just for a bit more depth and a slightly more beery profile.

Stinging Nettles. Photo by Dids on Pexels.com Discover the incredible health benefits of stinging nettle, from anti-inflammatory properties to high nutritional value. Stinging nettle benefits are tremendous! A sore tongue or a swollen throat would not be beneficial at all, so it is necessary to blanch the nettles in boiling water first! But wait around to find out why you should make nettles a…

Wild Hops

I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner but it just struck me as I walked past the location of some wild hedgerow hops last night that I could take a couple of bines to propagate at home. There were plenty of bines left to keep the wild plant healthy. The issue before was knowing which were male and female, as only female have hop cones. But I did manage to locate a clump which had a couple of last years dried out cones still clinging on. I discovered the plants long after harvest time so they were all dried up but a rub and a sniff of the dead cones still gave a fabulous citrus aroma so fingers crossed I can get these little cuttings to take. Then it'll be a case of keeping them in pots for a few years just to check that the cones are good to use. Wild hops can sometimes have a very strong onion or garlic flavour, not preferable for brewing.

A couple of days later I was over Cawood Marshes and went past the first Wild hop I ever used. Its still there years later but it hasn't faired well in the hard ground growing up a telegraph pole support. I think I last took some cones from it 4 or 5 years ago.

Sloes & Black Elderberries

Out walking the dog down the farm tracks the other night and saw this little note hung in the hedge, how strange I thought. Then what do I spy all over the hedge? Sloes that's what! I've been looking for them in Cawood for 5 years with no luck, I think all the local Gin fiends alway have them away, well not this time Gin fiends! Managed to snaffle 1.2kg before it go too dark.

The next day I did a little more foraging, this time a little closer to home, the back garden, lol. I collected 387g of berries from our young Black Elder. Not many but I thought that they would probably go well with the sloes, hence combining these posts.

Hawthorn Flower Syrup