James Weiderer brewing his backyard beer

Credit: Darshan Stevens

Backyard Brews

Who knew hangovers could be healthy?

"It’s medicine that can get you drunk.” That’s how James Weiderer feels about his backyard brew—a novel concept for those used to thinking of beer as an extreme sport for a Saturday night, but adding herbs to beer for medicinal purposes has been practiced for centuries.

According to Steve Bain, who learned about medicinal herbs soley in conjunction with making beer, the original intention of beer was often medicinal, and sailors would brew up new spruce loaded with vitamin C and bring it on board to fend off scurvy. “The history of beer is, in fact, that it was a tonic that could be preserved when a lot of other things weren’t able to be preserved,” says Bain, “So you could have herbs when they weren’t in season.”

Don Ollsin, founder of Herbal Healing Pathway, a local medicinal herb school, often holds workshops in how to brew your own medicinal beers. “I love the alchemy of it,” he says. “The process transforms and makes available the natural microbes . . . by the time you consume it, it’s in a highly digestible state.” But people tend not to party with herbal beers, he adds. “They’re nourishing, they’re like food.”

Ollsin commonly uses hawthorn (good for the heart), maple bark for color and flavour (good for the liver) and calendula for a golden summer beer, which is good for its anti-inflammatory properties.

Bain says it’s common for people to add things to beer for medicinal purposes and for taste. “Lots of homebrewers have dabbled in it,” he says. “Most people expect hops, but there is a lot of coffee and coriander and pepper; if you just go one step further it’s dandelion, yarrow, nettle and hawthorn.”

Contrary to popular belief, hops is not a necessary ingredient for beer. It’s primary function is to act as an anti-bacterial and anti-fungal, but according to Bain it can easily be replaced by other plants with similar properties, such as sage or yarrow.

“I pay more attention to plants,” says Bain talking about how brewing beer has affected him. “It’s been a motivation to learn about all kinds of herbs. Now I make time to go berry picking, and notice things like how plants are pollinated and where they grow best.”

There may be many reasons to brew your own medicinal beer, but primarily, as Weiderer says, “it’s fun.” It’s also a lot cheaper than commercial beer and provides opportunity for a much wider spectrum of flavours.

An arguable point, perhaps, but the difference between a Budweiser and a Canadian isn’t quite as pronounced as the difference between a home-brew with nettles and a home-brew with Reishi mushroom. And who can argue with a home-batch from Ollsin that he says “tastes like Christmas”? M