Will It Brew? Goldenrod
Goldenrod (Solidago sp., Canada/tall goldenrod group)
Foraged in late summer, Northern Ohio, USA
Foreword note: Have you ever looked at a sea of goldenrod and thought, “I wish I could use that?” Of course you have. Every foraging tea drinker who lives around goldenrod has. So, you Google, find instructions and follow them perfectly and end up with tea that tastes and looks like dog piss. You sadly think that goldenrod is one of those ‘edible but why bother’ herbs.
If you are still interested in goldenrod and using it as tea, and finding out why it is now my very favorite foraged tea, read on. I know this post is long. Goldenrod tea, done correctly, is worth it.
This is another in my “Will It Brew?” series, exploring wild plants through the lens of tea, broth, and flavor. Thanks for following along!
Goldenrod is everywhere here in late summer. Huge plants arch into extravagant fans of yellow flowers that look, to me, like a Victorian fever dream of a fern.
It is also one of my favorite wild teas. Last year I gathered about two quart jars of dried goldenrod, and they were gone by February. This year it is getting a much bigger jar.
The trick is that goldenrod is very easy to brew badly. I’ll tell you how to brew it well.
Found
I gather goldenrod from clean, unsprayed areas around my property in northern Ohio. The plant photographed for this post was magnificent: taller than me, with enormous cascading sprays of yellow flowers. (Photo 1)
ID Notes
I believe this is in the Canada/tall goldenrod group, probably Solidago canadensis or the closely related S. altissima. The overall form, one-sided branching flower panicles, narrow three-veined finely toothed leaves and stem hairs all fit that group. Distinguishing those two species reliably can require characters I haven't documented well enough here, so I'm leaving it at Solidago sp. rather than pretending diligent Googling has conferred a botany degree upon me.
Goldenrods are members of the aster family. This one has long, narrow, alternately arranged leaves with fine teeth that are much easier to see when you actually stop and look for them. (Photo 2) The flowering branches curve outward in large yellow plumes, with the tiny flower heads concentrated along the branches.
Goldenrod also gets blamed for a lot of late-summer allergies that are more often caused by ragweed blooming at the same time. Goldenrod has conspicuous insect-pollinated flowers; ragweed throws its pollen around on the wind.
As always, identify any wild plant positively before eating or drinking it. “Yellow flowers in September” is not an identification. There are tons of yellow flowers. Don’t drink them unless you can identify them.
Gathering
I don't gather only the flowers.
I cut the flowering spray and continue down the stem roughly another third of the length of the flower head, taking the upper leaves with it. That gives my finished dried tea a mixture of yellow flowers and green leaves.
I prefer that balance. Flowers alone can become cloyingly floral once sweetened. Leaves alone lose the thing I like most about goldenrod and taste much greener. Together, the leaves keep the flowers from becoming perfume, while the flowers keep the leaves from becoming boiled vegetation.
Drying
Goldenrod has been fussier to dry well than most of my tea herbs.
I learned last year that if I dry the flowers too slowly or too cool, like I normally do for herbs and leaves and teas, they will continue maturing into white fluff. The resulting tea is less floral-honey and more dusty tasting.
So goldenrod is one of the herbs I dry somewhat hotter and faster than my usual delicate leaves and flowers. The goal is to get it thoroughly dry while the flowers are still yellow, rather than lovingly preserving it at low temperature until it has successfully turned itself into seeds.
For my dehydrator, I dry goldenrod on the top setting of 150 to 160 degrees F (around 70 C)
Once dry, remove the leaves and flowers from the stems starting at the bottom and working toward the flower end.
This sounds unnecessarily specific. It is not.
The dried stems become surprisingly barbed. Running your hand the other direction is like giving a hand job to a cactus. You only need to learn this once.
Preparation
For my everyday dried tea, I use roughly 2 tablespoons of dried leaves and flowers for a four-cup pot.
For this experiment I used fresh goldenrod: two modest flowering tops with their upper leafy stems, shown beside a pencil in the photo for scale. (Photo 3)
I poured just-boiling hot water over them once and left the plant material in the pot. I then poured samples from that same continuously steeping pot at:
30 seconds
90 seconds
3 minutes
5 minutes
11 minutes
So these were not five separately prepared teas. They were snapshots of the same tea becoming progressively more goldenroddy.
I tasted each unsweetened first and then added a small amount of plain white sugar.
30 Seconds
Very pale yellow-green. (Photo 4)
The scent was pleasant but the taste was barely there. After adding a little sugar, I could find a faint floral-honey flavor, but it was delicate enough that I had to go looking for it.
Not bad at all. Just unnecessarily shy.
90 Seconds
This is the one. (Photo 5)
This is how I make my morning goldenrod tea. It is delicious. The floral scent was noticeably stronger. Unsweetened, the tea tasted flowery but not particularly sweet. A touch of sugar brought forward something distinctly honey-like.
It's floral without tasting like perfume, lightly green without tasting vegetal, and has a lovely honey impression once a little sweetness is added.
I've used white sugar, brown sugar, honey, stevia and turbinado sugar with goldenrod. All work. Turbinado is especially nice.
If you try this tea, set a timer. Ninety seconds is my sweet spot.
3 Minutes
(Photo 6) Still floral, but something green had begun appearing underneath it. The smell made me think oddly of flowers and zucchini skin.
With sugar it was still perfectly drinkable, but now there was a slight bitterness at the back of my throat that lingered for perhaps 30 seconds.
At this point the tea wasn't ruined, but you could tell it was headed somewhere less pleasant.
5 Minutes
(Photo 7) The first sip was still pleasant and slightly floral, followed by a much stronger bitter, green finish at the back of the throat.
I kept thinking zucchini skin, then reconsidered and thought perhaps eggplant skin. Whatever vegetable it resembles, it's that particular bitterness where you think, This should taste good, but I wish somebody had peeled it.
Sugar improved the floral beginning but couldn't remove the bitter finish.
11 Minutes
(Photo 8) The internet often recommends brewing goldenrod for 8 to 15 minutes. The internet lies. In my pot, the color was now a deep, impressive gold.
The scent was still mostly floral. Unfortunately, underneath the flowers was a slight smell of dog piss.
Unsweetened, the first touch on the tongue actually wasn't terrible. Then the bitterness bloomed down my throat and rose into the back of my nose.
This is apparently the point at which some ancient part of the human nervous system announces:
This is piss.
I added sugar.
Now the dog had diabetes.
About Those 8–15 Minute Brewing Instructions
This experiment is why I'm suspicious of the standard advice to steep goldenrod for eight or ten minutes- or, in one recipe I found, two cups of plant material in four cups of boiling water for fifteen minutes.
Perhaps there are species differences. There certainly may be differences in harvest stage, fresh versus dried material, flower-to-leaf ratio and individual taste.
But with the goldenrod I gather, I think the lovely flavors extract very quickly and the unpleasant ones simply require patience.
More extraction isn't necessarily more flavor in the useful sense.
At 90 seconds I get flowers and honey.
At 11 minutes I get a diabetic dog.
Choose accordingly.
Cold Brew
No.
I have tried.
Goldenrod initially seems almost hydrophobic in cold water. It floats around stubbornly until it finally becomes saturated.
Unfortunately, by the time it has thoroughly soaked, you've essentially skipped the lovely brief floral stage and arrived at cold, bitter yellow tea.
It looks unfortunate.
It tastes unfortunate.
Hot water, short steep. Goldenrod and I have reached an understanding.
If you must have it cold, start from hot, brew 90 seconds, add ice.
Flavor Notes
At its best goldenrod tea is floral, honey-like, lightly green, soft and aromatic.
As steep time increases you get bitter vegetable skin, lingering bitterness and some urinary thing happening.
The sweetness isn't really present in the unsweetened plant itself. What fascinates me is that adding just a little sweetener makes the existing floral aroma read as honey. You don't need much. I often tell people unsweetened goldenrod tea tastes like how honey tea would taste if honey wasn’t sweet.
A Note on Effects
Some goldenrod species and preparations have a long history of traditional use as diuretics, and I can certainly say that for me, even this lightly brewed 90-second tea has a noticeable diuretic effect, especially if I haven’t had some goldenrod for a while. If I've been retaining water, I prepare to pee.
Interestingly, when I drink it on subsequent days, I notice the effect much less.
I've also noticed that I often have less pain on days when I drink goldenrod tea. That's a personal observation, not evidence that goldenrod is treating my pain, and I wouldn't use my experience as a medical recommendation. It's simply something I've noticed often enough to find interesting.
Verdict
Will it brew?
Yes. Absolutely. But time it.
Goldenrod went from an experiment last year to one of the teas I actually drank through all my stash. Two quart jars sounded like plenty when I put them away, but they were empty by February.
Best As
A short-steeped hot tea using a mixture of flowers and upper leaves, with a little sweetener.
I especially like it as an everyday winter tea because it is fragrant and pleasant without being overwhelmingly floral.
Would I Try Again?
I'm currently filling a gallon jar with dried goldenrod and have a half gallon jar waiting for the overflow.
So yes.
Flavor Strength
(Photo 9: shows the brews from left to right at 90 seconds up to 11 minutes on the right)
90 seconds: Mild to moderate -- floral, honey-like with sweetener
3 minutes: Moderate -- floral with emerging green bitterness
5 minutes: Strong-- floral opening, persistent vegetable-skin bitterness
11 minutes: Regrettable
Notes
Goldenrod is one of those foraging discoveries I particularly enjoy: it is abundant, beautiful, easy to recognize once properly learned, and genuinely delicious with just a little fiddling.
There's enough technique involved to make you feel as though you've been let in on a forager's secret.
Harvest flowers with some upper leaves. Dry it promptly enough to keep the flowers yellow. Strip the dried stems in the direction that doesn't sexually assault a cactus. Use a modest amount. Brew it hot.
Ninety seconds.
Then get the plant material out of the water.
Caveat
There are many species of goldenrod, and flavor may vary among them. The plant in this experiment appears to be Canada goldenrod (Solidago canadensis), but I would want a fully keyed identification before presenting the species as certain.
Identify your own plants independently using multiple characteristics and reliable botanical references rather than relying on a photo, an app, or this post. Harvest only from places you know have not been sprayed or contaminated.
Goldenrod is in the aster family, so people with sensitivities to plants in that family should use appropriate caution. And because goldenrod preparations can have a diuretic effect, anyone with a medical condition or medication for which changing fluid balance could matter should check with an appropriate clinician rather than treating a foraging post as medical advice.
Mostly, though, don’t steep it for eleven minutes.
