Sunday Trees

Tree Beer and other stories about how humans use trees

Today we launch a new series at Our Trees which we are calling Sunday Trees. Every two weeks, we will tell a story about the interesting ways in which we humans have been using trees and tree products throughout the history of trees and people together. We will begin with beer.

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Tree Beer

Early beer ingredients: persimmon fruit, honeylocust pods, dark bread. The finished product foams in a glass.

We have complex relationships with trees. For many of us, our deepest connections to trees are spiritual. There is no doubt that we humans have a compelling need to be with trees, whether a walk in a local park or a long saunter in a forest.

Trees are essential to our spiritual lives, but they are equally important to our material lives. We will be discussing many of the practical uses of trees. For now, let’s talk about beer.

When white settlers came into the Appalachians and the Bluegrass, they found an abundance of food, both wild and cultivated by native people. There was plenty of cool, clean water, which in Kentucky became famous for production of bourbon. But there were no breweries, and settlers had to make their own beer. For nearly 100 years, the most popular beer throughout the region was made from two abundant fruits – persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) and honeylocust (Gleditsia triacanthos). Ripe persimmons are sweet and flavorful. Honeylocust fruits (legumes or pods) are packed with a sweet, sticky gum. The gum provides sugar, acts as a thickening agent, and adds some flavor. Although local breweries were established by the early 19th century, the tradition of making persimmon beer at home continued until the Great Depression.

Here is a recipe from 1779:

Get a clean, tight barrel, and place within it a false head four inches from the bottom. Add a pone of bread made of wheat bran and baked very brown; it takes this bread a long time to cook and it is added to give a good color to the beer. Next put in a small armful of honeylocust shucks (legumes) then put in the persimmons in greater quantity than the locusts, and continue in this way until the barrel is two-thirds or three-fourths full. Weight down and add water until all is covered. In three days, or perhaps a week if the weather is very cold, it will be a sparkling drink that will bite the tongue. A few dried apples or peaches will add to the flavor. Source: The Fruit-Grower, 1908

There were many variations on this recipe based on what ingredients people had on hand. Straw was often layered with the tree fruits, which must have changed the flavor quite a bit. Some brewers added molasses, wheat bran, or sweet potato peelings. The bread provided color and flavor. Yeast was not added, but the bread probably had some living yeast, and wild yeast was abundant on the surface of the persimmon and honeylocust fruit. Dried fruit, generally apples, pears, or peaches, were often added for flavor.

A few breweries make persimmon beer today, usually in the fall. Most of these are made with kaki persimmon (Diospyros kaki), the large Asian fruit often seen in grocery stores. Some craft brewers make beer with our native persimmon, but not with the addition of honeylocust fruit.

There are many other beers made from tree products, spruce beer being one of my favorites. And some beer is aged in white oak bourbon barrels to add flavor and color. But perhaps we have lost some of our connections to trees when we forego tree ingredients in our beverages. Well, there is always apple cider.

Coming in two weeks on Sunday Trees: The Violin, A Perfect Machine

Kev Marcus, violin, and Wil B, viola, known together as Black Violin