# Horehound horehound horehound horehound!



## TimT (10/9/14)

I'm just wondering if anyone wants to pick and send me any horehound. 

Apparently it's a weed here in Australia, that tends to grow in paddocks that have been grazed by livestock. Unfortunately here in the burbs I haven't seen any. Anyway, it's good stuff! You can use it to provide bitter in beer; it's a member of the mint family so there's some potential of getting minty flavours from the leaf, and apparently it was a popular hop-substitute back in ye olde early dayes of brewing.

I bought some dried horehound recently from a naturalist, but a) there wasn't very much, and B) if it's growing prolifically somewhere near me why would I bother?

So yep, if anyone could help me out that would be great. *I'd reimburse for postage costs and send some bottles of the final brew. *Alternatively, if anyone knows of somewhere around Melbourne that this stuff tends to grow, that would be great. (As it's a mint it probably would have been largely dormant over winter, but it will probably be springing up again all over the place soon.)


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## Weizguy (10/9/14)

let me know if you get any local offers. If not, I'm sure I have seen this about my place. Happy to wash and dry some, but local offers first.
I'm in mid-coast NSW.


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## TimT (10/9/14)

Will do Les. My folks live in Raymond Terrace so I could probably send them on an expedition! Maybe the best time for picking would be early summer, anyway, as the plants would be really big by then.


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## MastersBrewery (10/9/14)

Tim as always your exploits into expanding your brewing and weird and wonderful ingredients to use has me intrigued. Will keep my eye, out lets us know how this goes.

MB


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## Weizguy (10/9/14)

I'm not very far from there, for anyone who is not familiar with the area.

Maybe I should be farming that stuff. Good prices for weeds, I see.


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## TimT (10/9/14)

They were selling it at the naturopath for $60 a kilo!


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## TimT (10/9/14)

You could wash it, dry it out, and take a whole heap into one of the organic stores in Newcastle, I know of at least two.


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## Weizguy (10/9/14)

ah money, money, money...


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## TimT (10/9/14)

It's amazing what you can get charged for some of this stuff. For instance, dandelion, which you'll find in jars at organic shops, etc, for some ridiculous price. The bloody stuff grows everywhere! Admittedly you'd have to put in quite a bit of effort to make the kilo, but still....it's being charged like a luxury product when it's one of the most commodified commodities around.


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## TimT (12/9/14)

Bump!


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## panzerd18 (12/9/14)

One of the dried herb retailers does most stuff for around 10-12 per 250grams


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## TimT (12/9/14)

Yeah thanks Panzerd, getting it from a herb retailer is another option, but fresh is better - and ideal is being able to gather it for myself


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## mofox1 (16/9/14)

Ah... I get it now. I just thought you had Tourette's.


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## philmud (16/9/14)

Thanks to you Tim, I've been unable to walk past a patch of weeds without checking whether it includes horehound (I see a "skanky-dog ale" in your future).
Thought I'd found some yesterday, but the plant structure looked wrong.


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## TimT (16/9/14)

_Thanks to you Tim, I've been unable to walk past a patch of weeds without checking whether it includes horehound (I see a "skanky-dog ale" in your future)._

Welcome to the wonderful world that is my mind. It's turned into a sort of gardener with Asperger's. "Ooh, is that yarrow?" "Hmmm, wonder if that's alehoof". "Could that be.... horehound?" etc, etc.


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## TimT (16/9/14)

Like your suggestion of "skanky dog ale", btw. Maybe I'll have to make my own version of it (Respectable Poodle Ale?)


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## philmud (16/9/14)

You're welcome to use the original, though it's politically questionable


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## TimT (16/9/14)

It's never stopped homebrewers before....

You're up Footscray way if I recall correctly. Given that I don't think Ive found any out here in Lalor (we're kinda on the outskirts) I don't think you'd have much luck there either. Whittlesea council out here has a particularly brutal and unsubtle way of dealing with weeds (nukes them with glysophate) and the surviving ones tend to be the plantains and mallows that are too small to get noticed.


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## Weizguy (16/9/14)

I know there's plenty of yarrow on the Raymond Terrace road to Maitland in Summer.
Horehound may be out of season. Are seeds an acceptable option for you?
Just checked- it's perennial

Spotted one of these yesterday, tiny, with purple flowers, likely to be black horehound.
Google pic -


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## philmud (16/9/14)

TimT said:


> It's never stopped homebrewers before....
> 
> You're up Footscray way if I recall correctly. Given that I don't think Ive found any out here in Lalor (we're kinda on the outskirts) I don't think you'd have much luck there either. Whittlesea council out here has a particularly brutal and unsubtle way of dealing with weeds (nukes them with glysophate) and the surviving ones tend to be the plantains and mallows that are too small to get noticed.


I live near the train line which escapes some of the round-up attacks, but I haven't seen any yet. Dandelions, capeweed, fennel, even Patterson's Curse.


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## Weizguy (22/9/14)

There's a patch of the black horehound near my house, and currently in flower (see pics below):


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## Weizguy (22/9/14)

and a close-up.


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## TimT (23/2/15)

We collected a whole bunch of horehound yesterday - wahey! - from a paddock in Geelong. The owner wasn't too fussed about the horehound being there but happy to let us collect some.

I've tied it up in bundles and am drying it out in the shed.

Meantime I made a small bunch of horehound ale from some dried stuff I bought from the organics store in Bright. It's alright but the yeast I used - a wild yeast, probably some kind of low-attenuating saccharomyces - is currently refusing to perform the secondary carbonation. It's possible a bacteria may have taken over.

The taste is very strong and bitter, with a kind of earthy mintiness that could compliment a creamy, biscuity ale. A bit too strong in this current ale, but not so much as to be offputting.

I'm thinking of brewing a kind of Colonial ale with some of my freshly collected horehound soon, an extremely simple grain bill (perhaps pale ale malt + some oats) and maybe some wild yeast. Call it 'The Scourge of the Country' - from a line in a 19th century Australian poem about brewing: _Wild yeast is the scourge of the country...._


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## mudd (23/2/15)

Awesome.
I grew up in east Gippsland and we had this stuff running rampant on our farm. 
My dad was keen on being organic so spent days hoeing the stuff and burning it.
Never got rid of all of it.


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## TimT (24/2/15)

Blog post.

Interesting thing was, two days before I actually collected all this stuff, I was walking along the bike path by the South Morang train line and - for the first time in my life - saw some real life horehound. Picked a few leaves, had a chew, inspected the fruit and seeds, carried it home and looked up some pics on the net - yep, that's horehound alright.

Those invasive weeds can be so.... well, invasive! Love 'em!


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## wynnum1 (24/2/15)

IS it a precursor for any illegal drug that seems to be the problem with a lot of herbs.


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## TimT (24/2/15)

Wouldn't think so. It's a type of mint and that's the main thing you get from it, a mintiness.


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