Sleepytime Beer

Cue the Ramones. The great thing about hopped beer is how readily it knocks you out after a hard day’s work. But it’s not the only herb with sedative properties, of course.

I should try growing valerian in the garden. Maude Grieve says this about the difference between the fresh and dried roots:

The drug has a camphoraceous, slightly bitter taste and a characteristic, powerful, disagreeable odour, which gradually develops during the process of drying, owing to a change which occurs in the composition of the volatile oil contained in the sub-epidermal layer of cells: the odour of the fresh root, though not very agreeable, is devoid of the unpleasant valerianaceous odour. […]

Though in ordinary doses, it exerts an influence quieting and soothing in its nature upon the brain and nervous system, large doses, too often repeated, have a tendency to produce pain in the head, heaviness and stupor.

That odor was present but not prominent in the valerian I used, and was undetectable in the beer.