Shoots, Roots, Leaves, and Needles - Oh My

[Mad Max]

Unfortunately, this is going to be without pictures, but I thought I would talk a little bit about my experiences foraging in New England to brew tea, and make root beer. I lived in New England for approximately 20 years, during which I often spent a lot of time out hiking on conservation land. And, occasionally, with a small sack to fill with ingredients for tea.

One of the great benefits to understanding the environment you live in, is being able to walk into the woods and come out with a bag full ingredients. Some of my personal favorites include black birch, sassafras, sarsaparilla, wintergreen, spruce, white pine, and dandelions. Most of the ingredients can be dried, or used fresh. Save dandelions, they can be foraged year round, but each plant is more potent during different seasons.

• Black Birch shoots and Wintergreen leaves both have a mint flavor to them. They can be used by themselves to brew tea, or as secondary ingredients to brew root beer.
  
  
• Sarsaparilla roots and Sassafras roots both have a licorice flavor to them. They can be used by themselves to brew tea, or as primary ingredients to brew root beer.
  
  
• Dandelions are a wonderful flower, that can be eaten fresh, cooked, and brewed. Prevalent in the spring, they can almost always be harvested in enormous batches, and deep friend (a personally favorite) or brewed in tea, in a flavor slightly reminiscent of green tea.
  
  
• Spruce needles and Pine needles have a unique flavor, which could perhaps best be defined as Christmas flavor. They both make for a lovely, rich tea.

There is a great article on Nourished Kitchen that talks about cultivating a ginger bug, which is essential for carbonating your soda at home. Traditionally, when brewing root beer, my main ingredient is sassafras root, and to a lesser extent, sarsaparilla root. I add wintergreen leaves, or black birch sprouts to taste. I have also added in pine needles, and even made a pine soda.

I used to make homemade root beer every year for Thanksgiving, which is a wonderful holiday treat. You brew your ingredients as you would any tea, adding sugar to taste, and let it cool to a lukewarm temperature before stirring in your ginger bug, and transferring to mason jars. I have used mason jars, and I have used sterilized plastic liter bottles. The most important tip, is to keep everything sterilized. It is not a good feeling spending an afternoon of work, waiting a week or more, only to have your batch go bad. I had a ginger ale turn to slime akin to something from Ghostbusters.

I've included some YouTube videos below on identifying the plants I talk about in this post.

• [ur=[MEDIA=youtube]CzE3FDtEi0I[/MEDIA] Birch Shoots[/url]
• Sassafras Roots
• Sarsaparilla Roots
• Wintergreen Leaves
• Spruce Needles
• Dandelions

 

[Nifty]

Fantastic post!

 

[goatgurl]

wonderful information, thanks

 

[Mad Max]

Does anyone else have experience bottling soda, or tapping birch and maple trees?

 

[wyoDreamer]

Are you willing to share your root beer recipe? I love root beer...

 

[Mad Max]

I did not have it down to an exact science (or recipe), but usually made each batch to taste. You'll need to create a ginger bug for carbonation. You can find information on that here: http://nourishedkitchen.com/ginger-bug/

The process for making the root beer is the same as if you would make a tea. You simply boil and steep sassafras roots (either dried, or fresh), then add sugar to taste, and let it cool to a slightly warm temperature, but not hot. You can add sarsaparilla, black birch, or pine needles to the tea, if you like the taste. I find sassafras alone does the trick just fine, if you don't want to get fancy.

Two pieces of root are enough to make one medium-sized pot of tea, but you can add additional if you want a stronger taste and let it boil down some. Do not boil pine needles, but just let them steep. I used everything from old soda bottles to mason jars for my root beer, you just have to make sure you properly sterilize them. I usually just boiled them prior to use.