Staghorn sumac blossom tea had a surprisingly familiar taste: hard-boiled egg water

A Northern Ohio forager put staghorn sumac blossoms to the test to see whether they could work as tea.

The answer, based on their brew, was technically yes — though the cup seems to have opened with a faint floral character before drifting into a taste the poster compared to hard-boiled egg water.

What happened?

On Reddit, a user posted a new installment of their "Will It Brew?" series, where they try wild plants as tea, broth, and other infusions.

For this attempt, they picked fresh staghorn sumac blossoms in June from a Northern Ohio plant growing at "the edge of a woodland beside open farm fields," then steeped the flowers in hot water.

The first signs were encouraging.

They initially reported that "The first sip, taken almost immediately after pouring, was lightly floral and lightly resinous."

That early promise faded fast.

"By the three-minute mark I finally recognized it," they wrote. "The tea tasted remarkably like the water left behind after hard-boiling eggs. Not eggs themselves. The water."

Their final review was blunt: "Will it brew? Technically yes. But should it brew? Probably not."

Why does it matter?

Staghorn sumac already has a place in the kitchen later in the season, when its tart red berries are used in drinks and spice blends, so experiments like this can help identify low-cost seasonal ingredients.

But a fragrant or edible plant part is not automatically a good candidate for tea.

Here, the blossoms were beautiful to look at, the smell was described as "light but pleasant," and the brew was a pale green-yellow.

The flavor, however, told a very different story.

Foraging works best when it is paired with careful plant identification and realistic expectations.

Sometimes the better choice is to wait for a different stage of the plant — in this case, letting the blossoms mature into the more familiar red berry clusters.

What are people saying?

One wrote, "Your foragers were so preoccupied with asking if they could, they never stopped to ask if they should!"

Another said, "The egg water comparison killed me, especially since the flowers smell so good. At least you documented the full timeline so nobody else has to learn this lesson the hard way."

The original poster replied: "I took one for the team, lol."

A third commenter offered a more practical note: "Respectfully, you have to wait until the drupes turn red to get a decent flavor," and the poster agreed, replying, "Absolutely. I love the lemony taste of ripe sumac."

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