Category: Adventures of Ryan

Ryan’s back at it again.

We made the mistake of letting him out of the brewery again. After terrorizing the local neighborhood and running off in the forest, he emerged with his latest idea of what he can forage from nature for his next beer.

This time the object of his affections: spruce tips.

I know what you are probably asking yourself right now: “You mean those light green things that grow on those darker green trees?”

That is exactly what we mean.

Dragging our poor placement student and a volunteer out for a second time, this dynamic trio spent a few hours wondering the woods in Collins Bay in search for the perfect spruce tips. After collecting as many spruce tips as they could, and Ryan sticking whatever he could find in his mouth, they headed back to the brewery were thankfully, unlike their last adventure with dandelions, hours of processing did not await them.

What does our brewmaster plan to do this time?

The spruce tips have a prominent lemon-lime flavours with delicate pine in the background. This harvest was used to make a refreshing and light beer with mild tartness, mellow citrus flavours, and subtle piney complexity on the finish. This unique beer will only be made once a year after the spruce tip harvest season

This is only the start of Ryan’s descent into madness experiments with what should can be done in his pursuit of creating new, interesting, and delicious beers. Be sure to keep an on our blog as we document the latest in the adventures of Ryan the brewer.

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.