hist-brewing: Sweet Gale

[Daniel W. Butler-Ehle]

On Thu, 7 May 1998, Al Korzonas wrote:

> According to several herb books and Cindy Renfrow's excellent
> "A Sip Through Time," Sweet Gale is somewhat toxic.  Alas,
> there's a new line of spices being sold to homebrewers via
> homebrew shops (Nature's Garden or Brewer's Garden or something
> like that) and they sell both Sweet Gale and Wormwood (which
> is very toxic, I believe).

Brewer's Garden also announced last year that they'll be 
producing a saffrole-free sassafras root bark extract.
Sassafras root bark is the principle flavoring in root 
beer (well, at least in the beverage that commercial root 
beers descended from; in times past there may have well 
been many non-sassafras beverages known  "root beer", but 
I don't know), but the constituent saffrole was identified 
years ago as being a wicked-nasty carcinogen.  I don't think 
they've released the extract yet, but I'm watching for it.
I believe Brewer's Garden has a Website.

Dan


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