The Homebrewer’s Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to Making Your Own Beer from Scratch offers a month-by-month primer on making your own beer from the ingredients all around you, and the beer recipes are perfect for those brewers interested in creative ways to use these culinary ingredients in their brewing.
Carrots are a great year-round crop that can be harvested at different times, and they store well too. Wild carrot is a member of the Apiaceae or Umbelliferae family—the parsleys. Other members of the family look very similar and can be highly toxic, such as Poison Hemlock. It is critical to know the difference when harvesting, and this is one plant you should be absolutely certain about when foraging. For those who are hesitant about foraging for wild carrot but want to try a carrot seed beer, you can harvest the seeds from a known cultivated variety as a substitute (if you’re not growing them yourself, ask a farmer to allow some carrots to go to seed).
Carrot seeds add a whole other dimension to a beer. Our carrot-seed ale uses just the seed heads and gives a hint of carrot and a layer of apricot. Use the whole seed head for ease of harvest, only 5 ounces (142 g) per 5-gallon (19 l) batch. We’ve used the seeds both in the boil, for 60 minutes and steeped in the fermentor, as it was traditionally done. Both yield interesting results and are recommended.