Oak Watch - Readers Smarter Than Blogger

Great comment to my previous post... Thank you!

Have you read Samuel Thayer's "Nature's Garden"? It has 50 pages on acorns. It also offers the best explanation that I have seen as to why red oak acorns are initially more bitter that white oak acorns. I won't go into the whole thing here, but he goes into great detail about how white oaks don't necessarily have less tannins, they are just locked up in hydrophobic pockets.

Also, high levels of tannins aren't always a bad thing. If you are storing acorns by drying them, they will keep longer if they have higher levels.

I haven't read Nature's Garden, but I sure will now!  It promises to answer many of the questions I have posed about acorn bitterness and tannin levels, and no doubt explains why some acorns considered to be high in tannins were favored by indigenous people.

Thanks for the comment, thanks for the suggestion, and most of all thanks for reading!!