Happy September, food & foraging friends!
Benjamin Franklin did not say that beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy (though he did say something similar about wine), but that doesn’t make it less any true. And when we can mix conservation into a brew, well, that’s got to make Earth’s maker pretty happy too.
This month visiting family in Richmond, I was delighted to stumble onto just a thing. OktoberForest, a beer fest sponsored by the Nature Conservancy’s Virginia chapter, highlighted four different ecosystems in the Commonwealth via four delicious beers with ingredients sustainably foraged from them. The lineup included a Väsen gose with eelgrass from Virginia’s Barrier Islands, a longleaf pine IPA by Upweller Beer Company, and my favorite, a Norwegian farmhouse ale infused with sassafras leaves from the Allegheny Highlands. Several local breweries were pouring other wildcrafted brews made from pawpaws, spicebush, and my favorite, a floral ale with elderflower, calendula and citrus flowers that had my entire face shoved in the glass to drink in the jasmine-like scent.
It was good inspiration for the brew sesh I had planned the following week with Cindy, a fellow MAW member with three decades’ homebrewing experience. I’d been gathering spicebush berries (Lindera benzoin) since early August, and wanted to tap her expertise to brew them in a Belgian saison. While waiting for the grains to come to a boil, Cindy broiled tender morsels of chicken topped with a spicebush rub I’d made, which was a heavenly match.
In past seasons, I’ve given spicebush berries a hard pass. My first time trying them, I’d read poetic descriptions from foragers who claimed they couldn’t bear a spice rack without them, and I think my expectations had just been set too high. I found the curious, sharp taste of this Laurel family plant, akin to pink peppercorn, a little too aggressive to play well with mellower warming spices. Yet a savory application like Cindy’s chicken tendies seemed to bring out the best in this native berry. I decided to give it another go in a warming spice blend, dialing down the ratio of spicebush to other spices, and loved it this time, dashed on roasted plums with butter and hickory nut syrup.
I’ll report back on the spicebush saison when that’s ready next month, just in time to uncork it while brewing our third annual MAW mushroom beer at Waverly Brewery!
Left/top: Spicebush berry is a versatile flavor that goes well with sugar and spice and all things nice, from Belgian-style beer to grilled meats and roasted fruits.
Right/bottom: Pawpaws two ways, from Dylan’s sweet pie to a sour beer served at the Virginia OktoberForest beer fest. Left, a juicy beefsteak mushroom, ready for its balsamic bath.
For the fruitarian foragers among us, September means one thing: pawpaws. I’ve not been so lucky to bring in a haul myself this month, but as in past seasons, have instead been blessed with other people’s pawpaws (you down with OPP? yeah, you know me!) This past weekend, Dylan, another MAW member, brought me slices of a custardy pawpaw meringue pie the color of sunshine, with a promise to return with pulp, too. (Fun fact I learned this month: pawpaws co-evolved with dinosaurs.)
Many foraging friends are also getting their paws on some great mushrooms; the honeys and chickens are definitely popping. My favorite find this month was a juicy beefsteak, one of a rare few mushrooms best eaten raw. This mushroom actually appears to bleed when cut, and could be mistaken for liver in a dimly lit room. Its naturally acidic flavor works well with a citrus- or vinegar-based marinade, and makes a great little ceviche! I was excited to discover the specimen I found was actually Fistulina americana, a newly described species of beefsteak introduced to the taxonomy in 2022.
With the kiddos back in school, my cider tasting and foraging workshops are back in session too; spread the word! And last but not least, in other fall news, check out the October edition of Washingtonian for Nevin Martell‘s piece on wild foods instructors in the DMV, featuring yours truly, among other fab foragers to learn from.
Wildly yours,
April
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PPS: Here’s some bonus materials for my brewheads! Check out the first beer recipe ever etched down, a Viking-era ale with juniper still in fashion in Scandinavia (shoutout to my ancestors), and a 5,000-year-old Scottish ale recipe with Irish moss and heather tips.