Texas Native Beer

I've never brewed a beer before (I've made homemade wine a few times) and I want to try to brew something unique to my area.

Three plants that I know of that grow locally in the Dallas/Fort Worth are a variety of amaranth, dandelions, and Texas persimmon.

I'd prefer to not use hops, as they don't grow naturally in Texas, and if possible I'd like to get my yeast naturally from foraged plants.

I literally have no clue on how to get my own yeast, and I've done a little research on the brewing process and how to use the amaranth seedlings as malt. If anyone can point me in a direction on how to bring my local plants together into a homemade beer I would love them forever.

Thanks

Beer is barley, hops, yeast, and water. So you could make alcohol from local plants but I'm not sure it would considered beer. You can make alcohol as long as you have sugar, water and yeast but as far as making it taste ok it would be a lot of trial and error. Yeast grows naturally on fruit so you could drop an apple in and get your yeast but you would also be getting a lot of bacteria with it. If you wanted to make something with your local flora you could make a wine and throw in some water from a stream and dandelions or berries or something but making a ok tasting alcohol beverage from 100 percent local plants is gonna be very difficult

Thank you for the reply. I figured that this will be a tough task, and would probably be challenging for someone that is familiar with brewing, let alone someone with no experience. I'm willing to put in the time to get a good recipe through trial and error, and I'm not sure if you will be able to call it beer either, lol. I was thinking Abbott using the persimmon skins to get my yeast, but not sure how to avoid bad bacteria.

Look up Tizwin (pronounced tizween) that native cultures,including my Apache ancestors,made from malting & drying corn. It's made by all native cultures in the southwest,down through central America into South America & the Carribbian. Other cultures also have different native things they add to it.
You can search the web & find reprints of original explorers accounts. I mean really old. That's the fun part...others have even employed dried & ground mesquite tree beans.

unionrdr said:

Look up Tizwin (pronounced tizween) that native cultures,including my Apache ancestors,made from malting & drying corn. It's made by all native cultures in the southwest,down through central America into South America & the Carribbian. Other cultures also have different native things they add to it.
You can search the web & find reprints of original explorers accounts. I mean really old. That's the fun part...others have even employed dried & ground mesquite tree beans.

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Just to add to this, in parts of Northern Mexico (Sierra Madre region) this is known as "Tesgüino" and made by Tarahumara Indians. Rather than hops, it is traditionally flavored with local grasses.

Seems to me I read in an old report that they also added blue agave.

Texas just really isn't a region well suited to growing beer ingredients (I'm not aware of any hops or quality barley being grown here), I think you'd have more luck trying for a Texas wine. There are plenty of vineyards in Texas these days. There are several just in my area. Or even a fruit (non-grape) wine with various Texas-grown fruits.

hunter_la5 said:

Texas just really isn't a region well suited to growing beer ingredients (I'm not aware of any hops or quality barley being grown here), I think you'd have more luck trying for a Texas wine. There are plenty of vineyards in Texas these days. There are several just in my area. Or even a fruit (non-grape) wine with various Texas-grown fruits.

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I bet you could grow decent hops there (it would just require lots of water for irrigation). There are some decent Texas wines made with wine grapes grown in Texas. Considering that the prime hop growing areas overlap with good wine producing areas, I'm betting hops would not mind the central Texas climate and soil.

rklinck said:

I bet you could grow decent hops there (it would just require lots of water for irrigation). There are some decent Texas wines made with wine grapes grown in Texas. Considering that the prime hop growing areas overlap with good wine producing areas, I'm betting hops would not mind the central Texas climate and soil.

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One could easily grow enough for personal use in Texas, but as far as mass production, I think there is a reason hop growing in the US is primarily concentrated in the NorthWest.

unionrdr said:

Look up Tizwin (pronounced tizween) that native cultures,including my Apache ancestors,made from malting & drying corn. It's made by all native cultures in the southwest,down through central America into South America & the Carribbian. Other cultures also have different native things they add to it.
You can search the web & find reprints of original explorers accounts. I mean really old. That's the fun part...others have even employed dried & ground mesquite tree beans.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info on Tizwin. I have been looking for information on Native American alcohol production. For too long it has been taught that Natives had no alcohol until whites introduced them to it. The ease with which sugar sources are turned into alcohol makes this unlikely.

hunter_la5 said:

One could easily grow enough for personal use in Texas, but as far as mass production, I think there is a reason hop growing in the US is primarily concentrated in the NorthWest.

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I really don't know, so I am just spitballing here.

There is certainly a reason why hops are primarily grown in the Northwest, but it is not necessarily because that is the only place that they could be grown commercially (from the perspective of soil and climate). It could simply be because that is where the craft beer culture first really developed in the US. And the Northwest remains a nexus for ultra-hoppy beers. It very well might be that commercial hop growing is concentrated in the northwest because of an accident of history, not because of the suitability of the soil or climate. I don't really think of the climate in the Northwest as being similar to the climate in the traditional regions of Europe where hops are grown (e.g., Germany).

To use the wine example. . . Until about 40 years ago, no one thought that you could make good wine in America. Then some California wineries started making some really great wine that beat French wines in taste tests. Now, most people concede that the best CA wines can go head to head with the best French wine. Then for a while, people thought CA was the only place in America that you could make great wine (because that is where all the wine was made), now there are thriving wine countries in WA and OR. You are seeing wineries that are making good wine in Texas (and I have heard that some people believe that the Texas hill country is a better parallel to French wine country than CA is). My point is simply that the fact that the commercial hop growers are currently focused in the northwest does not mean that this will still be the case in 10 years.

Just don't let Monsanto get ahold of our hops,or there's gunna be trouble...

Thanks for all the feedback. I've read that it can be difficult to grow hops in Texas because of the heat, but more than that, I'm really wanting to stick with indigenous plants. This all started with me and a friend musing about what kind of alcohol settlers would have made had they landed in the gulf of Mexico instead of Plymouth. It was an admittedly dumb conversation, but it planted a bug in my head.

How about adding some prickly pears?

I have a few thoughts on that. This local thing with beer is only a few years old and it's ok to get hops from somewhere else. Texas is a state that has one of the oldest brewing traditions in America.
Since hops are a relatively new addition to beer, do some research to see of you can find an original bittering agent that is grown in Texas.
Last of all try to research indigenous types of beers made in Texas.
Good luck

I think it would be worthwhile to consider your goals- do you want to refine a product you can enjoy consistently, or are you more interested in a one-time proof of concept? If the former is the case, it might be worthwhile to do this in iterations. First, learn to make a decent brew-in-a-bag beer with standard ingredients. Then replace standard ingredients for native ones bit by bit. It will take longer, but you will probably end up with a tastier and more repeatable final product. If the latter is the case, have at it but keep a sixer of Shiner Bock on hand to wash it down, because the likelihood of all these untested ingredients and wild yeast making something palatable is about the same as accidentally rescuing Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent from the Vogons.

A couple thoughts on yeast. I live in Katy, just west of Houston, and ive been searching for a wild, suitable sacc-based yeast for quite some time. I have harvested much of the wild yeasts from areas around my house and each time it has yielded strains of Brettanomyces. This may be fine for some folks, but these Brett yeasts have displayed the most distinctive characteristics of Brett. Super barnyard and wet horseblanket. If this is suitable to you then no worries carry on. I have really wanted to brew with wild sacc yeast, but finding a neutral strain on the air has proved to be extremely difficult. Good luck in your mission!