Searching for Marsh rosemary - a gruit ingredient

[TimT]

Right, so on the cards early next year is a proper medieval style gruit. Gruits, the flavourings for medieval brews, were, as I'm sure you know were a mixture of several herbs - the base was usually yarrow, bog myrtle, and marsh rosemary. Also usually with other herbs thrown in, like Mugwort, Chamomile, etc

I've got Mugwort aplenty - it's hanging up in the shed, and is a relatively easy to buy herb. Yarrow, easy - it's growing in the garden and you can buy it in a few places. Bog Myrtle - found one source, albeit on the other side of the world (incidentally, I'd love to find a local distributor of the plant and grow a bog myrtle here).

But the final ingredient in a gruit - the Marsh Rosemary - is really stumping me.

You might find it being discussed under these names:
Marsh rosemary
Wild rosemary
Labrador tea
Ledum palustrum (its Latin name).

I'm buggered if I can find a source for this one. Any leads, folks?

The thing that really gets me about it is I'm pretty sure I've seen the name - Labrador tea - floating around on a label here or there - but just can't remember where.

HELP!

 

[barls]

id hit up a naturpath. you would be surprised what a good one can source

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I developed an unhealthy interest in wild lettuce after reading an article about lettuce by a plant biologist and the natural latex it exudes when cut, and why the Hopoe Indians would consider collecting it, making it into a gum and smoking it, anyway the seeds you are looking for Tim are on eBay I buy my seeds on there so you shouldn't have any problem, here is the link.
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Heirloom-200-Seeds-Tree-Limonium-Sea-Pink-Lavender-Statice-Marsh-Rosemary-Flower-/261852102425?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

There is a similar plant in Australia but looking at the Latin name not the same family.

 

[TimT]

Thanks guys! Wide eyed - actually that's a link for Limonium Perezii, a fine plant but different from Ledum Palustrum. They are both confusingly called Marsh Rosemary - a folk etymology, I guess. I should have clarified - not Limonium. (We have some Limonium in the front garden and our bees love it.)

I want to do a wild lettuce beer too! I had a little taste of the sap from a young one (don't judge me!) and my instincts tell me it could go well with a dark brew. Wild lettuce are all over the place so really it shouldn't be too hard to actually collect sufficient sap for plenty of brews.

 

[Mardoo]

Ah yes, evenings as a young lad, smoking wild lettuce goo in the kitchen, hoping desperately to get high…

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Yes plenty of wild lettuce around, didn't meet my ancestors though as it was suggested I might (according to the Hopoe Indians)
Heres another link Tim pretty sure customs will stop the leaves coming in though, reading about the plant it is slow growing so if you do manage to get the seeds I hope you are not in any hurry to brew your gruit. (also likes boggy ground) have you investigated an alternative?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Labrador-Tea-Rhododendron-or-Ledum-groenlandicum-28g-/110785222092

 

[TimT]

Good question. Proper rosemary probably isn't a substitute. Marsh rosemary is probably the most alarming ingredient in medieval gruit - comes from the rhododendrons, which can be poisonous if you have too much.

Randy Mosher discusses another gruit ingredient, yarrow, in Radical Brewing and he seems very wary of it: "possibly toxic" are, I think, his words at one point. I find this a bit laughable (especially since he seems so happy -go-lucky with heaps of other brewing ideas). We have yarrow in the garden, I've had it in several brews, and it's very pleasant: I've looked yarrow up a fair bit and can't find anything really about the toxicity Mosher refers to.

But marsh rosemary was a very common ingredient in medieval brews. Any decent knowledgeable recreation of the style would seem to need to include this ingredient. Hence my dilemma.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

I did read that it was toxic if to much was ingested, then again so are plenty of every day vegies that we eat.

 

[manticle]

Like getting vitamin A poisoning from eating 4 million carrots in one sitting.

 

[Mardoo]

Or polar bear liver in one.

 

[TimT]

Haha well rhododendron honey is an ancient poison - it once paralysed an entire Greek army. True story bro. I heard another story from a person who ate it while on holidays; his words - "I thought I was going to die". Not impressed! So merely the fact that marsh rosemary is in the rhododendron family should command respect. (That being said, a lot of wildflower honeys probably have sizeable amounts of rhododendron in them...) I do wonder if the presence of marsh rosemary wouldn't give the brew some unusual side effects.

 

[Feldon]

Tim,

I suspect you may know of this site already but thought I'd post it anyway in case not:

http://www.gruitale.com/bot_wildrosemary.htm

Wild rosemary is used in beer for
it's pleasantly fresh and spicy aroma, its bitter taste and also
its enjoyable narcotic properties. It should not be used in excess
as it is somewhat toxic and can cause headaches. The flowering tops
have Ledum oil, which has the strongest inebriating effects. Traditional
beer recipes specifically call for fresh flowering tops, which indicates
that ancient brewers knew of this increased potency and were
specifically attempting to enhance their beers.

Also says that the botanical name Ledum Palustre L has been changed to Rhododendron tomentosum Harmaja since the plant taxonomists have determined that it is a member of the Rhododendron family (thought this might help you source a supply if you're searching under the old name).

Good luck, and let us know what gruit ale tastes like when you've made a batch.

 

[kunfaced]

Is that an opiate producing lettuce?

 

[manticle]

So merely the fact that marsh rosemary is in the rhododendron family should command respect.

Aren't tomatoes and eggplants the same family as Belladonna? Not sure if the train is headed towards logic station in this regard.
Anyway that site that Feldon linked to had a contact ( [email protected]) so that's where I'd be searching.

 

[TimT]

See what you mean Manticle, and hey, anything that makes me look like less of a weirdo trying to source an obsolete international narcotic and hallucinogen has got to be a good thing.

 

[wide eyed and legless]

Is that an opiate producing lettuce?

Not an opiate but goes under the name opium lettuce.

 

[TimT]

Kunfaced, Buhner in Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers describes it as having 'feeble opiatelike effects'. His whole passage on the harvesting of the sap - the bit for flavouring (and medicine) - or 'lactucacarium' is hilarious.

...a rather prolific, unpleasant two-to-four-foot weed covered with small spines that have the persistent property of insinuating themselves into the skin without the grace to be easily seen or extracted. The leaves grow haphazardly up the spindly, tough stalk, and the whole plant is to pped by a rather disgraceful bunch of small dandelion-like flowers waving about on a thin profusion of branching floral stems... During early flo wering, confront a large grouping of plants with shears in hand, somewhat like Jason in Friday the 13th (the hockey mask is not necessary ) or a herbal Atropos. Decapitate 20 three-to-four- foot-tall plants by cutting all the flowers from each..... Allow the milky sap to ooze out and dry a bit, then scrape it off in a bowl....

The way he works in a reference to Friday the 13th and Greek mythology in the one passage is especially impressive.

 

[mr_wibble]

They don't have what you're after (not via my searches anyway), but "All Rare Herbs" is a good online source for this sort of thing.

https://www.allrareherbs.com.au/

I've bought vanilla vines (dug out by bandicoots), coffee plants (eaten & pulled out by wallabies) and various other plants & seeds from them over the last few years.
Always had good service, and the local fauna love the exotic part of their diets. *sigh*

 

[TimT]

Yeah, they're great. We got some stuff from them (including I think vanilla vines, though they just don't like the Melbourne climate!) They're not brilliant on brew herbs (it's not exactly their market) but they do have some alehoof/glechoma hederacae - which everyone should grow. A very pretty little herb that has potential not only for brewing but for teas and kombucha and salads, etc.

 

[TimT]

Got some! Starting up a new thread...