Experiment: Roasted Dandelion Roots

[Hop]

Since I have two beers aging right now, I thought I'd take this weekend to do an experiment. The experiment was to determine the viability of using roasted dandelion roots as either a bittering agent (in place of hops) or aromatic in my beer.

Using dandelions in beer is rare, but not unprecedented. New Belgium has a rather tasty Dandelion Ale, so I decided to start working toward understanding the taste and bittering qualities of dandelion. Fresh dandelion greens are not generally available until spring, so I thought I’d see what dandelion roots were like first.

If you don’t want to read through my entire process, here’s a quick summary, prefaced by a note: First off, this is experimentation. I’m trying to share the results of my experiments as I go through with them, which means not all of them will yield positive beer-worthy potential.

Dandelion roots fall into the “not gonna brew with it” category. In short, they simply don’t taste very good. The bittering quality is poor, the aroma is off-putting, and the taste can be described as kissing someone who just finished smoking an entire pack of cigarettes at very high concentrations or shoving a stale-but-dirty sock in your mouth at half that concentration.

If you'd like to read through my entire process and thoughts, take a look here: Experiment: Roasted Dandelion Roots

[bigdan]

I think most of the time when people make any achool with dandilion they are using the yellow petals from the flower.

[Billy Klubb]

my sister made a dandelion wine once. she followed the directions to the letter and it came out tasting like dirt. she thinks she knows what went wrong, but it put me off. maybe a dandelion ale would be tasty.

[one_dead_soul]

my sister made a dandelion wine once. she followed the directions to the letter and it came out tasting like dirt. she thinks she knows what went wrong, but it put me off. maybe a dandelion ale would be tasty.

my mom makes a dandelion wine thats fucking awsome. and strangly enough i guess there are different kinds of those yellow dandeloins. so maybe it depends on what kind you have for it to taste good. maybe come spring i'll have her show me and i'll pake a pic to show you guys the differents. as of he moment i have no clue though. i do know she just uses the head.

tom

[BDawg]

When I was a kid, my mom and dad used to make a salad using dandelion greens. I hated that shit.
They were from the depression era, so I guess stuff like that was common back then.

[Bugeater]

Thanks for the report on the dandelion roots! Now I know another weird ingredient not to use. Whatever you do, don't let this experience deter you from brewing with other strange shit. Some great things have come from folks who didn't know that they weren't supposed to do something.

Wayne

[Brandon]

When I was a kid, my mom and dad used to make a salad using dandelion greens. I hated that shit.
They were from the depression era, so I guess stuff like that was common back then.

And pokeweed salad

[Cold_Spring_Brew]

most people use the flower for flavor, the leaves and stem are bitter, but in a nasty way.

My great-grandfather used to make Dandelion Wine and from what I gather from my grandfather just the flowers are used as is.