Several years ago, a member of my local homebrew club introduced me to dandelion wine. I was skeptical at first, but after the initial sip, I was a convert. It had a wonderful floral aroma that paired perfectly with a delicate sweetness and pleasant tartness. I immediately inquired about his process and recipe, but soon zoned out listening to him describe the arduous task of picking the dandelion buds and pulling off all of the sepals, leaving just the yellow petals for the wine. Despite the promise of a delicious end product, I couldn’t get over the tedium required to get there, and so burgeoning aspirations for my own homemade dandelion wine quietly died that night.
Five years later, I found myself helping out at my in-laws’ horse ranch, putting up temporary stalls and trying to keep my five-year-old daughter entertained at the same time. While I was dragging tarps on top of metal frame stalls, it was impossible to ignore the spring emergence of the dandelions in the surrounding alfalfa field. Much like those dormant dandelion seeds that survived the winter only to spring forth when conditions were right, so too did my aspirations for using foraged dandelions in a home-crafted drink. I pacified my truculent five-year-old with the task of picking dandelions in exchange for the promise of a toy. She busied herself with the yellow flowers while we finished putting up the stalls, and by the end of it, I had more than a pound of dandelion flowers.
Since using the foraged dandelions was an impetuous decision, I went where anyone else in a similar situation goes...the Internet. Most of the recipes I found seemed to follow the same rough sketch: mix the dandelions petals with a ton of table sugar, citrus rinds, a gallon or two of water, bring to boil, allow to cool, pitch generic yeast, ferment, bottle, and wait several months for it to mellow. Some recipes got a bit fancier with golden raisins and ginger. Regardless, it all of seemed a bit like prison hooch; the only things missing were instructions on how best to hide the wine during bunk inspection and how much volume one would need to make to keep in the good graces of the local MS-13 gang. I’m no vintner, and I’m clearly showing my prejudices here, so maybe this is a common approach for wine, but it all seemed a bit ham-fisted.
I also came across some interesting beer recipes that replaced the bittering hops with whole dandelions, root and all (see “Plan Bee Farm Brewery’s Dandeliaison Recipe”), but since I had only the flowers, I’ll have to revisit this another day. I reconnected with my fellow club member who introduced me to dandelion wine and his instructions were (again) to cut away any of the sepals, leaving just the petals and no green material (at least he was consistent). I looked at the pounds of dandelions and was ready to eat the cost of a stuffed cheetah if it saved me hours of trimming and the resulting carpel tunnel. But I still had all of these flowers and a tepid desire to use them, so I did what any good brewer does; I improvised.
I decided on a cider base to complement the dandelions’ floralness, but I wanted to incorporate some of the flavors I had in the original dandelion wine that set me on this path. To keep the citrus component, I used zest and juice from five different citrus fruits, and I included local wildflower honey to up the OG and accentuate the floral character. I also felt the apple juice, citrus zest, and honey would overcome any unpleasant vegetal flavors.
Dandelion Cyser Recipe
Batch size: 4 gallons (15.1 liters)
Target OG: 1.060
1.5 lb (680 g) dandelion flowers (there is no need to remove the sepals, but be sure to remove as much of the stem as possible)
2 oz (57 g) of citrus zest (I used the zest from 1 navel orange, 2 lemons, 1 tangerine, and 1 tangelo)
2 lb (907 g) honey
Wine/cider yeast nutrient
16 fl oz (473 ml) citrus juice (from the previously zested fruit)
3 gal (11.3 l) preservative-free apple juice
YEAST
Safale US-05 is my go-to cider yeast
DIRECTIONS
Place the picked dandelions in a stockpot and pour 1 gallon (3.8 l) of boiling water over the flowers. Cover the pot and let it sit for 48 hours.
Separate the liquid from flowers using a sieve or colander. Retain the water, discard the flowers. (The flower-steeped water tasted surprisingly good and not overly bitter or vegetal.)
Boil the liquid for 30 minutes. A noticeable funky, grassy, floral aroma will envelope your house. With 10 minutes left in boil, add the citrus zest. With 5 minutes left in the boil, gently stir in the honey and the wine/cider yeast nutrient. At flame out, add the citrus juice.
Mix the flower-citrus-honey water into the apple juice. Allow the mixture to cool to 70°F (21°C).
Pitch the yeast and get your semi-compliant five-year-old to shake the fermentor to aerate. Lacking a five-year-old, shake it yourself. Ferment in the basement (65°F/18°C) under the watchful eye of a stuffed cheetah.
At the time of this writing, the cyser has dried to down to 1.002 and is wonderfully complex and surprisingly drinkable for being only 2 weeks old. The aroma is a mix of crisp apple, nondescript citrus, and an effervescent herbal/floral character, reminiscent of honeysuckle, eucalyptus, and mint. The flavor was similar, but the citrus was more prominent. I’m enjoying all of the flavors and don’t see much I want to adjust at this stage, so I’ll probably give it another week or two in primary and transfer into a keg and carbonate it to serve it as bright sparkling floral summer cyser.
I’m happy I made the leap to try something with dandelions, but it wouldn’t have been possible without a healthy dose of child labor.