Swamp Thang Gruit

This went into the bottle today:

http://hopville.com/recipe/1200823/specialty-beer-recipes/swamp-thang-gruit

3 gallon batch:
3 lbs liquid sorghum extract
2 lbs rice syrup solids
1 lb brown sugar
1 lb wildflower honey (at flameout)
0.5 lbs Bob's Red Mill GF Toasted Oats (light toasted)
0.5 lbs Malted Quinoa (light toasted)

Herbs:
1.5 oz yarrow at 60 min
1 oz labrador tea at 30 min
1 oz sweet gale at 15 min

Yeast:
White Labs English Ale Yeast

Fermented 20 days in primary, then racked to secondary and added additional 0.5 oz yarrow, 0.5 oz labrador tea, and 0.5 oz sweet gale, steeped in 170°F water for 15 minutes prior to adding to fermenter. Went another 10 or so days. Cleared up nicely, considering out of the kettle it looked like swamp water! (Oats sure seem to add a lot of trub!)

Estimated OG (this was a partial boil) of 1.098. Target FG, which I nailed spot-on, was 1.017. My guess is OG was actually a bit lower than 1.098, though, since the oats probably didn't convert.

Preliminary taste was very pleasant; a different sort of bitterness than you get from hops, with some spicy/fruity notes that may be the herbs or the yeast. Almost "sherry-like". Damnedest thing I've ever tasted. Full body, nice copper color, very mild aroma. Ever so slightly medicinal. After a month or two of maturing, I have high hopes for this one! Except it's more of a holiday beer than a summer drink. I drank just the hydrometer sample and man...I already feel a little somethin'-somethin'!

I'd like to say "sounds good" but I don't know what sweet gale, labrador tea or yarrow tastes like. Instead I'll ask, how do you come up with your recipes?
They are very unique. I liked the quarry forest one.

Just so you know, white labs yeast isn't completely gluten free, though close. It's grown on a barley medium.

ChasidicCalvinist said:

I'd like to say "sounds good" but I don't know what sweet gale, labrador tea or yarrow tastes like. Instead I'll ask, how do you come up with your recipes?
They are very unique. I liked the quarry forest one.

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Usually, I just go wild with the grain/sugar bill, since there's really no tried-and-true "good" gluten-free recipe to go off of (yet!), and then borrow the hop schedule (or herb schedule, in this case) from a book or an online recipe. In this case, I got the herb schedule from a combination of Papazian's "O Gope Yarrow" recipe, and Stephen Harrod Buhner's gruit recipes in "Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers". It's really a crap-shoot, but I figure *anything's* better than Redbridge, so why not experiment?

mloster said:

Just so you know, white labs yeast isn't completely gluten free, though close. It's grown on a barley medium.

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I know. I've done my homework on it. It's below EU standards for gluten-free labeling, even in the vial, so I reckon the finished beer should be safe enough. But we'll see...if I have a reaction, I'll stick with the dry yeasts. Heck, I'll probably stick with dry yeasts anyway now that I've learned I've been horrendously under-pitching my liquid yeasts due to not making starters. Frankly I'm amazed this beer fermented as well as it did, given the high OG and the total lack of a starter. Guess I got lucky!

Are these herbs in the recipe fresh or dried? I just harvested about 2 oz fresh labrador tea, 2 oz fresh myrica gale berries, and 2 oz fresh yarrow. what's the conversion? Thanks!

They were dried. When using fresh, to convert properly from dried depends on the herb really...fresh herbs have water in them, which makes them heavier, but some are also more aromatically potent when fresh. I'd say though 2 oz of fresh should be plenty even for a 5-gallon batch...these herbs are very potent in flavor, and I think less is more. Whatever you do, though--don't copy this recipe! It came out horrible, and even 6 months later is undrinkable. I poured most of it down the drain. I realize now that the medicinal taste I noted came not from the herbs but from the stressed-out yeast, due to the high gravity and the gummy oat compounds.