Not unlike the juniper bushes that have long graced traditional brews from rural Norway to the islands of Estonia, green alder shrubs often grow on the sandy coasts and subalpine regions of Canada and the United States.
Unlike juniper, no traditional brewing culture grew up around green alder—but its proverbial star has been rising for more than a decade among savvy Québécois chefs and the province’s inspired craft brewers. And its popularity is likely to continue spreading from there.
Why “Dune Pepper”?
As a young boy, after observing hares and partridges eating the small catkins—or male flowers—of the alder tree, Fabien Girard told himself he had to try them, too.
His conclusion? Their aroma and flavor were pleasant enough for him to decide they were edible in larger quantities.
Years later, as a biologist and author, Girard was working for a Québécois company that specialized in northern foraged ingredients. He packed up some catkins and put them up for sale—and nobody bought a jar.
Dumbfounded, Girard eventually struck up a conversation with notable spice hunter Philippe de Vienne. De Vienne opined: “No wonder it doesn’t sell. Who would want to put ‘alder catkins’ in their mouth? You’ve got to find a more appealing name for them that evokes their contribution to a dish.” (In French, incidentally, the word for “catkins” is chatons—which is also the word for “kittens.”)
To Girard, the fact that these green alder bushes grow in forested sand dunes seemed like a potentially evocative origin for a new name. The catkins themselves kind of look like peppercorns, too.
Botanically speaking, green alder is in the Betulaceae family, which is systematically close to the Piperaceae family that includes peppercorns. However, green-alder catkins have no piperine—the alkaloid in black pepper that provides its prolonged spiciness. Instead, these catkins are mostly rich in yellow-pigmented, antioxidant flavonoids. People often describe its flavor as both resinous and floral, somewhat bitter, with lemony-citrus and herbal notes.
So, for reasons of provenance, aesthetics, and flavor, “dune pepper” came to be the official name. Suddenly d’Origina—that company selling northern herbs and spices—starting selling jars of the renamed alder catkins. And forward-thinking chefs across the province, always on the lookout for innovative local ingredients to showcase, noticed.
Brewers soon followed suit, with delicious results.
Dune Pepper at the Table
In Québécois gastronomy, dune pepper is now often found in the recipes of chefs who want to celebrate northern identity. They pair it with sauces, meat dishes, or even desserts flavored with maple syrup and chocolate.
Since dune pepper appeared on the market, the acclaimed restaurant on the ground floor of the Institut de tourisme et d’hôtellerie du Québec (ITHQ), Montreal’s foremost culinary and hospitality school, has showcased it now and again in their seasonal menus. The same goes for renowned chefs Normand Laprise, owner of Toqué in Montreal, and François-Emmanuel Nicol, of Quebec City’s two-Michelin-starred Tanière. They’ve both heralded the potential of many lesser-known local ingredients since early in their careers.
Thanks to Girard’s work, we’ve also learned that the best time to harvest dune pepper is as soon as the leaves are falling, in autumn. That’s because time and climatic elements, such as decreased sunlight and night frosts, seem to drive off its aromatic properties.
Another way to boost dune pepper’s flavor, Girard says, is to sauté it in a pan—thus creating a Maillard reaction, much like you might do with many curry-bound spices.
Brewing with Dune Pepper
Despite these flavorful discoveries, dune pepper remains largely unknown or misunderstood among the same culinary cultures that border the fragrant bushes.
Furthermore, nowhere else on the planet is the catkin of the crisp alder used in beer. The branches of juniper in Scandinavia and the Baltic countries come close in terms of aromatic signature—a delicately lemony-spiced greenery—as does Myrica gale, for that matter. The latter even appeared in some medieval beer recipes to develop refreshing, hop-like bitter notes.
For now, Quebec brewers enjoy juxtaposing dune pepper with pale cereals, Noble hops, and spicy fermentation-driven phenols. The most obvious pairing for dune pepper thus seems to be the Belgian-inspired saison.
The St-Pancrace brewery in Quebec’s Côte-Nord region was the first to brew with dune pepper, in 2015. Unsurprisingly, the northerly beaches along the wide St. Lawrence River near the St-Pancrace brewery are rife with green alder; it was head brewer and cofounder André Morin who dreamed up Saison des Dunes. Besides pairing the already-spicy saison profile with the woodsy, lemony tones of the catkins, his beer is easy to drink while evoking a sense of place in every sip.
After a few test batches, however, he learned that dune pepper stresses the yeast if added before fermentation is complete. Why? Because dune pepper—as we now know thanks to Girard’s lab work—has antifungal as well as antiseptic properties, creating a strain on fermentation.
So, Morin arrived at a different method: He brews a concentrated dune-pepper tea that he adds to the saison after the yeast has finished its work. Here’s his process:
- Once fermentation is complete, grind 40 grams of dune pepper per hectoliter of beer. (That’s roughly 0.25 ounces per five-gallon batch, or 1.6 ounces per barrel.)
- In a kettle, heat some water to 194°F (90°C). Morin uses 0.75 liters of water/tea per hectoliter of beer (about five fluid ounces for a five-gallon batch).
- Add the dune pepper, switch off the heat, and infuse for 20 minutes.
- Roughly filter the infusion, cool it down, and add it to the saison in the fermentor.
The Spice Must Flow
Soon after the St-Pancrace beer appeared, Marc Bélanger came up with Arrakis. The head brewer of Montreal’s Brouhaha drew inspiration from Frank Herbert’s Dune series as well as from the saison fermentation profile.
Bélanger’s base beer is pale and light, allowing room for the green, spicy, fruity notes of the alder catkins to express themselves. The beer also was a hit among customers at the brewpub long before local ingredients and terroir became more central to Quebec’s brewing scene.
In Quebec’s far eastern Gaspésie region, the Brett & Sauvage microbrewery brews only spontaneous and mixed fermentations that go through their coolship and oak-aging program. Founder and brewer Francis Joncas’s use of aged hops also takes inspiration from the lambic-brewing tradition, but the rest of his approach is more focused on local ingredients.
So, it’s no surprise that dune pepper features prominently in one of his prized wild ales. Poivre Pas Poivre, J’y Vais is an elegant exploration of three northern ingredients: dune pepper, tansy flowers, and sweet gale, perfuming his classic golden beer.
Another specialist of pale, golden saisons, the renowned Dunham brewery in southern Quebec, put dune pepper to the test last year. Head brewer and cofounder Éloi Deit is always on the lookout for different techniques and ingredients to try.
Recently exploring the concept of peppers in a collaboration with Popihn, a brewery in France’s Burgundy region, Deit released a trio of “peppery” saisons. The base beer was the same: a classic saison, naturally carbonated in the bottle—the specialty of his team. However, he flavored one with tangy, numbing Mah Kwan peppercorns from Thailand; another with spicy, aromatic Phu Quoc pepper from Vietnam; and the third with dune pepper.
The last perfectly balances the beer’s delicate plantain-like esters and blends seamlessly with the hops.
A Golden Bonus
One last thing to note: Girard also discovered, after macerating some dune pepper in a solution of 40 percent alcohol, that a sunny yellow color naturally emerged—a golden hue that remained stable, untainted by time. Ungava Gin, also made in Quebec, was the first microdistilled product to take advantage of this colorful phenomenon.
