Everything You Need to Know About Botanical Beers

Homegrown or foraged botanicals have always been at the center of certain farm breweries’ beer programs, but now, more producers are exploring ways to highlight these flavors. It’s only natural for this shift to take prominence in 2024, as consumers seek out lavender in their lattes and complex herbal bouquets in their amari. So, why not in hoppy lagers or farmhouse ales?

Matt Levy, head brewer of Threes Brewing in Brooklyn, New York, sees the rise in botanically driven beers as a “chicken-or-egg” conversation. “Are consumers seeking these out more, or are brewers starting to connect to these things more through other beverages — whether it’s new-age gin or amaro — [then] interpreting [that] inspiration through the lens of beer?” he says.

Whether consumer demand is driving brewers to respond with flavors found in gin or amaro, or brewers are leading the charge and it’s consumers who are responding favorably, botanicals offer a refreshing respite from intense hoppy-bitter-bomb or candy-adjacent flavors common in beer.

“People are so sick of tasting the same thing in beer,” says Marika Josephson, co-owner of Scratch Brewing Company, an Illinois brewery known for using locally farmed and foraged ingredients. “It’s just hops all the time. People are seeking out different beverages like botanical amari, and it’s fun to see those flavors then pop up in beer.”

Sarah Young, executive vice president and owner of Atlanta’s Wild Heaven Beer, much prefers to highlight these natural, seasonal ingredients rather than “adding more coconut chocolate bars to another beer,” she says. “I think we’ve long suffered the adjunct trends of adding things to beer that can just muddy the waters.”

How are botanical beers made?

Brewers utilize different methods when sourcing botanicals, depending on where producers are located. Some may grow their own, while others with land and access to nature can forage wild ingredients. Urban breweries may seek out partnerships with rural breweries, local farms, or gardens. Available options inform what beers are made, often over style parameters — it’s about what’s blooming now, and how it would play with what else brewers might have to work with. 

“For me, it’s, ‘What’s growing well right now?’” says Evan Watson, head brewer and co-owner at Plan Bee Farm Brewery in Poughkeepsie, New York. “I was [recently] in our garden, and we’re growing these Thai chilis, we have Thai basil, lemongrass…I thought that would be a cool beer to do…like a Thai curry.” 

The Watsons think more about how ingredients grown, foraged, or sourced nearby can come alive in a beer, rather than engineering botanicals into set styles. This farmhouse-style “barn beer” approach, alongside mixed-culture fermentation, sets the foundation for different brews with different bouquets, like a recent amaro-inspired beer with dandelion, chocolate mint, strawberry mint, lemongrass, lemon verbena, and lavender.

“Inspiration is definitely season-first,” says Josephson. One recent brew employed home-grown ginger from the freezer plus sassafras leaves, cedar branches, and lemon basil. “It’s a sour beer, piney, citrusy, and “almost gin-like with a little tartness,” she says.

At Austin brewery Jester King, beers frequently develop from foraging missions, whether on the brewery’s own vast acreage or through collaborations. A recent ale, called Abscission, made in collaboration with Scratch Brewing Company, incorporated fallen leaves, grapevines, spicebush, juniper, laurel, and sassafras.

For an urban brewery like Threes, Levy says there’s an overarching framework of Belgian styles. This is because of how botanical flavors work with their spontaneous or mixed-culture fermentation, when either wild yeasts or a combination of wild and controlled yeasts naturally ferment beer, often in a big, open vessel called a coolship. 

From there, Levy pulls in influences from his garden, farmers’ markets, cocktails, and wine. Similarly, Wild Heaven partners with the Atlanta Botanical Garden for a Garden Beer Series of varying styles. Young points out Wild Heaven is well-positioned for such a project because brewmaster Eric Johnson — also a horticulturalist and host of PBS’s “GardenSmart” — is “probably American brewing’s best gardening spokesperson.” 

Many botanicals express unexpected notes after going through the boiling stage and/or fermentation — lavender can yield a cinnamon-like characteristic, for example. Amounts must be tinkered with, too: Tea-like lemongrass can be used in abundance, while just a little too much candy-like lemon verbena can come off tasting like soap.

What do botanical beers taste like? 

Watson and Josephson work with these botanicals as they would with hops, adding them at different stages of the beer’s boil to extract different flavors and aromas. Most brewers add these plants on the brewing process’s “cold side,” or post-boil when the beer is fermenting and settling. This is similar to a dry hop, where complex aromas are extracted while minimizing bitterness. 

Deciding on proportions and when to add these botanicals is worth it for these brewers. As Stuffings points out, the specific profile of Abscission is a singular, lightning-in-a-bottle representation of foraging on two breweries’ land in Illinois and Texas. In addition to unique flavors, these beers all share something distinguishing: a sense of place and a sense of time.

“People are...going back to basics,” says Levy. “Consumers want a connection to what’s local, and breweries [are] embracing that kind of connection with the land, with local farms, with sourcing and foraging.” It’s a reminder of the spirit that sparked craft beer to begin with, to drink what’s local and fresh, and it also builds an element of storytelling into each beer. What are the botanicals involved? Where did they come from? What other brewery collaborated in the foraging trip, or why is that farm partnership special?

The concept of terroir is tricky in beer. Hops and grain grow better in some regions than others, and breweries must source accordingly. But incorporating botanicals grown or found near a brewery’s location instills that sense of place. 

Stuffings says Jester King’s philosophy is that their beer is “a product of time, place, and people, all three variables going into creating a sense of terroir.” For Watson, that first factor is especially important.

“When you’re using fresh ingredients, it’s representative of a specific window of time,” says Watson. Dandelions represent a beer made during the peak of the plant’s blooming season of May to October, for example, while mint marks a period of June to September. “These foraged and farmed ingredients are blossoming and ready at certain times,” he says. “Beer can be a little time capsule, and botanicals are a really good time stamp.”