Backyard Suburban Nightmare

I mentioned before that I’m going to label beers fermented with my wild yeast under the name Feral. Well as a sort of sub-Feral line I’m going to label beers hopped/spiced/flavored with items from my yard under the name Backyard. These are currently all very experimental beers (obviously).

The first in the series is called Backyard Suburban Nightmare. I decided I’d make a beer using edible weeds, particularly clover and dandelions. This beer has no hops and it is spiced with Dandelion Root, Clover Blossoms, Ginger Root, and Cardamom.

I made this beer by straining hot water through my not quite spent grain from my Saison (remember I had crap efficiency). That gave me around a gallon and a half of not terribly sweet wort which I added a few cups of table sugar to and boiled with some muddled dandelion roots, a few dandelion leaves, a lot of clover blossoms, a tablespoon of ground ginger and a dash of ground cardamom (because it was there).

Cooled and pitched my Feral yeast onto it the next morning. It fermented like a normal beer and I bottled it. It turned out decent, mostly to me it tastes like an alcoholic ginger beer with a slight astringency. Looking back I wish I hadn’t added the ginger since it dominates the flavor and I can’t really taste the other herbs. There’s a slight lemonyish flavor hiding in the background which may be from the clover and/or possibly the lacto bactria hiding among the yeast in my feral blend.