Foraging: Dandelion and ginger ale

OK so I have a confession to make; we bought the ginger (~50p for a huge root!) so the 'foraging' aspect here applies only to the dandelions, but what foraging!  The recipe calls for the entire dandelion, including the large tap root (which resembles a skinny parsnip).  In the lush dandelion plants on the farm this root tends to reach at least 15cm into the soil, which can be quite tricky to remove.  The trick we used was to slowly wriggle a fork into the (heavy clay) soil next to the plant and leaver out the entire clod of earth.  Then this can be broken open like a plaster cast to reveal the dandelion roots (and several surprised worms) within.


Tip #2 is to read the recipe first, I didn't and after collecting a huge wheelbarrow-load of dandelions at the farm - at great effort- we arrived home to find that we needed a measly 450g!


Needless to say, the (non-human) boys did well out of this mistake.


The ale needs to ferment for at least 3 days in a lidded container (it doesn't have to be airtight).  We used a glass drinks dispenser, which I found in a local skip, and which was sterilised with a Milton tablet for 15 minutes.  As we had no idea how much liquid the dispenser held, we drained out the sterilised water into a measuring jug.

The recipe itself is simple, first activate the brewing yeast in warm water with a couple of teaspoons of sugar.  While waiting for this to bubble, boil the whole dandelion plants (well-washed and checked for slugs!), roughly chopped ginger and rind of 2 lemons in a pan of water (ours held 5 pints) for 10 minutes.

Then strain the liquid into your sterilised container. We used a cheese muslin cloth for this, but any sort of fine sieve would do (the bits are all pretty large, and there is a second filtration step before drinking).  Top up the container with the remainder of the liquid (in our case, 10 pints) and the juice of 2 lemons. Add the sugar, cream of tartar and mix until dissolved.












The following tip #3 will probably be unnecessary for most people: when collecting glass objects out of skips, check for leaks before filling with liquid.  It was at this stage in the recipe that I noticed a slow drip, drip, of brown sugary liquid falling from the join between the container and the dispensing tap.  Cue 10 minutes of running around madly in the search for something to seal the leak, including the garden shed, bathroom cupboard, under stairs cupboard and back to the garden shed.  We questioned how a house that has required so many different types of silicone sealant over the past few years, can suddenly be devoid of all sealant in our time of need.  Finally, we tied our selected 'fix'  of fine PTFE tape around dispensing tap and watched like hawks for the next 5 minutes for any sign of further leakage.  Luckily it worked. 

The ale needs to ferment in the container for around 3 days (more if it's slightly cold), around 20oC is ideal for fermentation, before filtering into sterilised plastic bottles.  It's easy to tell if fermentation is happening because tiny bubbles are visible rising up through the liquid.

Final tip #4, is to squeeze the plastic bottles slightly before screwing the lids on and then leave to ferment in the warm for another day or so. When the bottles have filled out again, there is enough gas in the bottles to make a nice fizzy drink and your fermentation is done!

Drink within 1 week.

The following recipe makes ~15 pints

16 oz / 450 grams young dandelion plants
 2 lb / 900 grams brown sugar (I've seen recipe's specify demerara, we used light muscovado, but see post-tasting notes below)
1/1/2 oz / 50 grams root ginger (again, see post-tasting feedback)
2 large lemons
15 pints / 2 gallon water
2 oz / 50 grams cream of tartar
1/2 oz / 20 grams brewer's yeast (bought online- not the same as bread yeast which was news to me)

The Tasting

Well it bubbled away slowly in the fermenting container from Sunday afternoon until Thursday evening.  I then filtered and bottled the resulting concoction and left it in the airing cupboard overnight to continue fermenting in the bottles.  Fermentation was clearly still happening more enthusiastically than I realised (there were no obvious bubbles) because on Friday morning I had to release some of the gas from the on-the-point-of-exploding bottles.

I decided to take a bottle into work for people to test.  There was some initial scepticism when they heard I hadn't tried it myself but lunch saw the first tentative tastings. 

The general consensus was 'not bad', which I'm going to take as a win for my first ever try.

Useful feedback included - Demerara would have better than muscovado, as the taste of this sugar came through quite strongly.   More ginger would have been better.

Another interesting suggestion was that it would benefit from a few fresh mint leaves in the glass, which is definitely something I'm going to try.

Personally, I like it, which is a relief since we've got 4 large bottles to get through!