Last week some of the team and I went to Strang Ranch, just outside of Carbondale, Colorado to pick dandelions. This was our second year experimenting with these. For years I’ve loved wild dandelion beers from both domestic and international breweries, but I never tried using them until just last summer. We released that beer earlier this year labeled as Creative License #4. We loved it so much we’ll be rebranding it for this next release. Check out some pictures of our morning below.
We started the day by treating everyone picking to breakfast at The Village Smithy, a must for morale if you ask me. Picking dandelions wasn’t in any of their job descriptions!
We timed the picking, unknowingly, just in the nick of time. Many of the dandelions had started to go to seed. A day or two later and we’d have been skunked.
The obvious and most incredible part of Strang Ranch is their unobstructed view of Mount Sopris. It was hard to pick sometimes, the views are just so beautiful.
Even though I was the only one who’d done this before, I still wore flip flops and shorts. My knees are still sore and stained a week later. Idiot.
Last summer we picked 16 pounds, enough for a single puncheon of wild dandelion beer. This year we had the goal of 30 pounds, enough for two whole puncheons! We managed to get it done in a couple hours before it got too hot out there.
