We warned you that our beer was going to be Daft, but our head brewer’s latest idea may be his most out there yet.
One day, after a few too many pints, Ryan stared out the window at a patch of grass that was more yellow than green and thought to himself “I can make a beer out of this.”
We laughed thinking these were just the crazy ramblings of a man who had one too many. But much like the idea for Daft Brewing grew from a drunken conversation after a brewery crawl, Ryan didn’t let it end there.
Ryan got in touch with the grounds crew at Sisters of Providence St. Vincent de Paul, a local Kingston nunnery (which is exactly what you think it is – a place where nuns live) to arrange for a team from Daft to forage and harvest dandelions on their property.
Dragging our poor placement student and a volunteer along, they spent 2 hours at the nunnery filling three buckets with dandelions. After all the dandelions were collected, they had to be processed – separating the yellow from the green. After hours of work and several pairs of hands that were stained yellow, when all was said and done we had four pounds of processed dandelions.
Now what?
Ryan has a plan – This dandelion beer recipe is a play on dandelion wine, which has been made by people all over the world for 100’s of years or more. A light grain bill of malted barley and wheat is combined with a large addition of wildflower honey to produce a light gold coloured beer. An irresponsible amount of dandelion petals are added to the end of the boil and to the fermenter to give this beer complex earthy and floral flavours and aromas. An ABV 7.3% means that you can age this beer in the bottle for years, like a wine. You can expect a taste of Spring any time you open this bottle. A burst of floral flavours with subtle citrus and more complex earthy characters in the background. We recommend drinking in the depths of winter to remind yourself that things do get better and the snowy wasteland will eventually recede into green grass and dandelion fields.
This is only the first of many experimental concoctions that Ryan will be developing in that mad scientist brain of his. Be sure to stop by and check us out when we open to see what other crazy juices will be spilling from our taps.