Pineapple Beer. Wormwood gin. Beetroot wine. Prickly pear Brandy. Agave Tequila. What do all of these have in common? Ah! Now I have your attention!! Well they can all be fermented in your own garden. And thanks to our country's rather unusual l🤔ckdown restrictions, pineapple beer has been the most popular beverage of the last two years. All these foraged and fruitie ferments are on my next to-do list. Maybe in that available gap between 2:30 am and 3:15 am. Anybody else try an unusual homebrew?
When ordering more heirloom seeds recently I came across Agave seeds. Imagine my surprise to see that these are in fact the wild looking indigenous plants dotting our landscapes. You learn something new every day!!
After doing some research I discovered that these Agave Tequila are not actually indigenous but arrived nearly 2 centuries ago via ships. Being used as exceptionally tall ballasts by Spanish and Portuguese sailors, the Agave, more recently, has been used as feedstock for animals. Because of similar arid conditions they thrive here and most assume (myself included) that they are indigenous.
A local woman makes Tequila from the Agave. However patent rights do not allow her to label it as such. But the discovery really got my mind working in overdrive.
Years ago I tasted a delicious artisan Lettuce wine. Yup! You read correctly. Lettuce! FarmerBuckaroo and I made mead years ago because we are blessed with so much honey. It was astounding. In 2020 the ban on alcohol forced me to start making sourdough bread - because yeast and pineapples were more scarce than ducks teeth thanks to desperate homebrewers.
Following all the rain there's a glut of fruit this year - nobody is complaining. I have worked around the clock dehydrating, jamming and freezing. But I would love to make my own alcohol to make those wonderful herbal tinctures. And of course, what better way to wind down after a scorching day on the homestead than with our own chilled fruit wine? Apricot and Lemon Verbena Wine ... hmmmmm. There's also a batch of kale about to go to seed. I wonder what Kale Wine with rose geranium would taste like?
