Hot & Cold Brewing
I am no herbalist but I am a bit obsessed with making botanical beverages! I have used both hot and cold methods to achieve different flavors for my mocktails. I mainly aim to make tasty, refreshing drinks just for pleasure and hydration, but I am leaning more toward nourishing herbal infusions the more I get to know my favorite plants.
Getting to know your plants as in: foraging the right time of year for the best tasting, most nutritious stage. Becoming familiar with every stage of their cycle. Eating plants raw and cooked; whole, chopped, ground; fresh and dehydrated. If its a root, simmering it the correct amount of time, or dehydrating and brewing it later. Cooking florals and plants into syrups or baking. Brewing tea with dehydrated plant matter, a light infusion using fresh plant matter in water, or even using fresh matter or syrups in your ferments, etc.
I hope to point out the difference between making fun beverages with teas, floral syrups and edible plants, and a ‘nourishing herbal infusion’. Making nourishing herbal infusions require knowledge of the plants, their volatile oils and other compounds, using correct brew times, and being aware of any other complications that may affect you. It is herbalism. It is common for edible plants to have disclaimers for pregnant people and people on certain medications. You need to know your stuff!
“You Made Broth”
This title is borrowed from April Graham’s Teas, Brews and Infusions book. This is her description of what you have when you put fresh plant matter in water and wait - whether it is hot or cold. She is an amazing herbalist so her goal is to extract nutrients and use the plant to its full healing potential. Though she describes this method as a “weak broth”, we have all muddled mint into our mojitos or threw cilantro in a marinade and loved the flavor it adds. Every summer I look forward to drinking water with fresh rose or lilac petals steeped in the fridge overnight. It has no nutritional value but it is pleasant as hell.
An example of a cold brew is making a lemonade and then adding a fresh herb for more flavor and even just to look beautiful. Rose lemonade with lemon balm, for example. You can make your lemonade to taste and then muddle the lemon balm or mint in your jar and leave it to release flavor over night. Muddling affectively helps along the process of breaking down the cell walls.
Cold brews are also the quicker way to go when you are trying to make things like wild soda. When making wild soda, you are utilizing the wild yeasts that exists on the plants and flowers and berries, along with in your raw honey, to ferment and create a light carbonation in your beverage. We do not want to pour boiling water on fresh plants and kill the yeast if this is our goal. It will also pasteurize your honey, which again, kills those wild yeasts you need to start a ferment. You can use teas brewed with hot water for wild sodas once they have cooled down (which takes more time).
Hot Brewing Method
This is where you can get into really extracting those active plant constituents (making nourishing herbal infusions) or you can just literally make tea. Tea typically being a blend of herbs, dehydrated, brewed in small amounts, steeped in hot water for 5-15 minutes.
I will slightly paraphrase April Graham when she explains a nourishing herbal infusion:
A specific weight of dried plant matter, boiling water, cap, allow to set between 4-24 hours before straining. This long timeframe and water going from very hot to room temperature allow really high levels of nutrients and medicinal properties our of whatever herb we are working with. Folks mainly make these to drink, but we can also use them as ingredients using herbal creations that contain water, like lotions or creams. You can also use them to soak your hair, feet, fertilize plants.
TEA
I use tea as a base for my mocktails all the time! Store bought tea bags or dehydrated plants from the land or my garden will do it. You can also use dehydrated plants in cold brews but I have found that you should expect a slightly different flavor.
All we know is that we want it to be dehydrated because the process of dehydration weakens the cell walls and makes it much easier to extract nutrients in a much quicker timeframe, as well as flavors and sometimes colours (pink rose petals, for example).
SIDE NOTE: I have found that some dried flowers like roses, require less plant matter to make amazing tasting syrups than it would if the petals were fresh. The color also seems to be more intense when syrups are made with dehydrated petals.
When you are foraging to make teas, you are looking for plants with a strong scent to add depth to your blend. These plants are not high in nutrients but they are high in different volatile oils and other compounds. April uses Lavender as an example to watch out for in her book:
“She is extremely fragrant, and - while very healing in small amounts - if you made a nourishing herbal infusion out of her and drank it, you could really hurt yourself.” Again, use caution and get to know your plants.
I will leave you with a link to a really great resource for making wild soda - a free video tutorial by Jade Alicandro of Milk & Honey Herbs.
I recently tried her Elderflower Rose Wild Soda and loved the results. They have a naturally probiotic element, are slightly carbonated and so pleasant to sip on. Making it requires a lot of stirring and tasting, which I loved!
Jade gets more into hot and cold brewing methods, and how making a wild soda with tea cooled down (which significantly reduces wild yeasts but does not eliminate it, and you are still getting yeasts from your wild honey) is actually more nutritious and may offer a lot more for those who are looking to drink it for health purposes.
Enjoy !