ISSUE 34, HOME BREW, Part 1: Honey Locust Beer
Honey Locust
Honey Locust (Gelditsia triacanthos) is a native tree, famed for its thorns and its sweet pods of seeds. The pulp of the pods when ripe were eaten by Native peoples and used by settlers for brewing. There were commercial attempts to extract sugar from the pods in the 19th century, suspended because it was so much easier to secure it from sorghum; but the chemistry of the honey locust is interestingly complex—indeed it is a natural vehicle for stenocarpine, cocaine, and atropine, hence its extensive use by Native shamans and homeopathic folk doctors in eastern America.
Despite its plush chemistry, it has never been reckoned poisonous (the fate of its close relative the Kentucky Coffee Bean), and has had extensive culinary employment. The pods were used as fodder for pigs and goats, and when broken up, for chickens.
But the pulpy pods were beloved by thirsty humans who used them as a base for brewing Honey Locust beer, a mildly alcoholic brew. In S Carolina there were specialists in this preparation. In the Dutch Fork area, for instance, W. P. Houseal (“The Dutch Weather Prophet”), brewed it beginning in the early 1870s and at last in the early 1920s. He flavored his with baked sweet potatoes and a little corn meal. Guilford NC was a major center of home manufacture until the 1950s. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Texas were other centers of home made honey locust beer.
I’ve reproduced the earliest recipe I could find, dating from the 1831; it does without the extraneous flavoring ingredients.
There is a thornless variety of honey locust, but the prickly version was the dominant form on the landscape, used as hedging that had major deterrent power.