Gruit ale

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Priemus

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 26, 2009
Messages
448
Reaction score
3
I have been reading about Gruit ale, basically unhopped beer (using hop substitutes), which infact predates populiar use of hops in beer.

The site I have been reading is:

http://www.gruitale.com

And it has a lot of recipes there:

http://www.gruitale.com/recipes_en.htm

I have a friend trying the first one, the Norwegian "Skull splitter", maybe he will let me upload his pictures, but has anyone else tried making beer like this before? any Gruit Ales you might recommend?
 
I find gruit ale a fascinating topic. I've been meaning to try making some for a while. I've got mugwort, juniper and yarrow in my garden. I wish I could get a hold of some marsh rosemary and sweet gale.
 
I find gruit ale a fascinating topic. I've been meaning to try making some for a while. I've got mugwort, juniper and yarrow in my garden. I wish I could get a hold of some marsh rosemary and sweet gale.

As a follow on to the previous reference thread someone made a bit of some historical recipe that the poster Bob had suggested. I failed to find that thread. But it was very interesting.
 
Priemus, those photos of your friends brew session? What is the plant he is cutting to make the filterbed in his mash?

I too was inspired from gruitale.com to make my own gruit ale. I've done 2 iterations on my recipe now, with a 3rd planned for this summer. Last year's came out well, and I enjoyed it very much. I want to get this 3rd try under my belt before posting the recipe, as I feel adding some yarrow flowers to the fermenter will really make this a great brew!

Basically, I decided to start with a scotish old ale recipe, because I wanted something with a malty profile as a base. I skipped the hops, and put some greater wormwood in the boil for bittering, with a touch of sweet gale. Then, I put more sweet gale and touch of wormwood in the primary after fermentation stopped (like a dry hop).

Be careful of the wormwood. That is one BITTER herb! It will completely kill your tastebuds, so a very little goes a LONG way.

Sweet gale is a delightful herb. Very pleasant and aromatic.

I recently used some yarrow flowers in a mead, and it was also a wonderful aromatic addition. I plan to 'dry hop' with yarrow in my next batch. :)

It will also take a few months of aging to allow the gruit herbs to mellow out in the brew. Young tastings can be very bitter and harsh. I think it really comes out best after at least 6 months.

Starwest Botanicals provided excellent quality herbs ... I would recommend taking a look there.

Good luck!
--LexusChris
 
Me too. I've been reading Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers and there are a ton of great hop-alternative recipes.

I'm having trouble finding bog myrtle/mugwort and sweet gale/myrica gale though. Any sources?

-Joe

While I appreciate the book for what it is, the author obviously hasn't tried to make most of the recipes, and doesn't even seem to know all that much about brewing in the first place. There are too many recipes based on 100% simple sugar as the fermentable for me to take the recipes very seriously. But it is interesting to read and to get a little background and use practices for many herbs.

By the way, though I haven't used them, I've heard wildweeds.com is a good source for hard to find gruit herbs.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
He said it was juniper bush, I tried the beer last week he made btw, was fantastic kinda tasted like Scandinavian Christmas beer, but uncarbonated. Took a few bottles and carbed em up, went from fantastic to unreal.
 
Priemus, that sounds tasty! Thanks for the info. I live in the city, so cannot just walk out back and chop down any herbs for brewing. Lucky you!

I have grown some yarrow from seeds recently .. hopefully can harvest their flowers by end of summer. :)

KingBrianI, I've been pouring over Buhner's book (as well as Culpeper's Complete Herbal book). I do agree that I would not brew many of those recipes explicitly as listed. They are historical and found in obscure texts by brewers from small villages & olde cities. They do not represent our current understanding of beer or brewing. However, they do embody the brewer's creativity & use of locally sourced ingredients available to them in their time.

Looking through old texts from Culpeper's, they are difficult to follow as the terms & language have changed in just the past 300 years. Some are nearly impossible to translate into modern brewing lingo.

But that is the fun of it all, no? :) I certainly take inspiration form them, and gleen ideas for some fun gruit projects in the future.

On a final note, I ran accross this link on Olde Saxon Ale brewing. While a modern writing on ancient beer making, it captures some of the flavor of writers talking about such things back in the olde times. Short on details, long on embellishment & story.

Good fun! Good luck with your gruit lads!
--LexusChris
 
The Homebrewer's Garden, by Dennis and Joe Fisher offers quite a bit to any questions about Gruit ales and the general use of herbs. unfortunately, it seems that bogmyrtle/sweet gale is a suspected carcinogen..........i don't have any further sources to back up or disclaim this assertion but apparently, their source on this is the FDA.
 
There was a recent article in Imbibe that lead me here. I want my next brew to be a gruit, but I don't really want to make 5 gallons of it. Think I'll I'll get a smaller carboy or PET fermenter to just experiment with it. Think I'll do this one (from guitale.com):

INGREDIENTS
Grain bill
13 pounds / 6 Kg english pale malt
4 pounds / 2 Kg crystal malt
3 pounds / 1.3 Kg German pilsner malt (roasted at 350°F / 175°C for 20min)
2 pounds / 1 Kg German Munich malt
Extra
¾ cups corn sugar for priming
1 tbs. irish moss
Herbs
2 onces / 50-60g of Yarrow
2 onces / 50-60g of Wild rosemary
2 onces / 50-60g of Bog myrtle
Yeast
Wyeast 1028 London Ale

Will convert to partial mash recipe though.....
 
I actually brewed that one about a month ago. I changed it up a little by adding in Juniper berries and cutting back on the herbs by half an ounce each. I would say it is coming along nicely, and is pretty interesting(intense) as far as aroma and taste. I have heard that this mellows out, but it might take a while.

Be careful with quantities of Gale and Rosemary if you use them, I read somewhere that Vikings would consume huge amounts of the stuff before battle to... "alter their consciousness" and become fearless.

I can confirm it causes headaches first hand :)
 
Back
Top