Spicebush is an edible native plant that used to be commonly used to make teas, etc. I have a few in my garden and the leaves & berries smell wonderful when you crush them.

So I trimmed up a few branches into small chunks, boiled 'em for an hour or so to make roughly 3 gallons of tea. While that was happening I bottled the batch that had been fermenting... mixed berries from the garden; had been in secondary with oak cubes for about 10 weeks (I pulled the fruit after 4 weeks though). Sample was tasty.

After an hour, I shut heat off and used the tea as the base for my beer: roughly 1/2 pound each of oatmeal and flaked wheat, 8 lbs LME and a pound or so of honey. Mild hops, I think Saaz for bittering and Goldings for aroma.

Also had a taste of the tea with a little honey in it. Very nice.

For yeast I used the trub from the berry saison I bottled immediately prior... yeast was probably weak as it was from secondary and had been in the secondary bucket for well over 2 months... but it seems to be fermenting OK, not terribly vigorously with about a 24 hour lag time. Also threw in the oak cubes from the berry beer... wasn't going to since I wanted the beer to be light colored but as it was already dark coming out of the boil I figured what the hell, let's try it.

Smell from the airlock is incredible.

Decision will be whether to keg or bottle... keg or bottle... keg or bottle...