Golden Gruit Belgian Ale by a Mead Man

So, new guy to the forums here, and to brewing beer in general, I usually stick around the cider/mead side of things, but intrigued by the unusual and historic, I decided to take a stab at making a Gruit Ale (Unhopped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit). Of the beers my fellow conspirators and I enjoy, many are Belgian-style ones, so it seemed like a great idea to just combine to two, making a sort of Spiced Gruit Golden Ale. As this is my first real attempt at this sort of thing, i thought sticking up the would-be recipe for crit would be a good idea. so here it is. (based loosly off of a Golden Monkey Ale clone)

Size: 5.5 Gallon

8.85 lb pale malt extract
.5 lb flaked american barley
.5 lb Aromatic Malt Belgium
2 lb Honey (clover)

Here's where it gets a bit different than most are used to:

Herb infusion (instead of hops, all added at 60 mins of a 75 min boil)

1 oz Yarrow Tops
1/4 oz Wormwood

Other spices

1/4 oz Cardamom Seed
1/2 nutmeg "nut" (grated)
1 medium cinnamon stick

Yest used is White Labs WLP500 Trappist Ale Yeast

What do you guys think? suggestions?

actually I think it sounds really really good. Half of a nutmeg nut sounds like it might be a bit much if its greated, especially if it is fresh that is some potent stuff

Bringing back a older topic, but I'm curious if you ended up doing this, and how it went?

I am contemplating brewing up a Gruit, and thought I would get some impressions first.

Ego Archive said:

Bringing back a older topic, but I'm curious if you ended up doing this, and how it went?

I am contemplating brewing up a Gruit, and thought I would get some impressions first.

Click to expand...

Here is a link to a couple gruits I did and my impressions.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=64725.
The gruits are drinkable but not enjoyable. That may change with age but I'm not betting on it.
The recipe used here looks much better than what I did.

Craig

Ego Archive said:

Bringing back a older topic, but I'm curious if you ended up doing this, and how it went?

I am contemplating brewing up a Gruit, and thought I would get some impressions first.

Click to expand...

I ended up doing it, and it turned out very intersting. I overdid the complexity of the spices, next time I'll just do corrander and orange zest, as well as cut back the yarrow a bit and putting it earlier into the boil, which will make it a bit less present in the nose (hopfully), as most people who tried it were a bit disturbed by the herb-y smell. I quite enjoyed it, but it's not for someone who likes to stick with more traditional views of beer, lending more twards thoes who enjoy trying something new. One thing I will say though, is the buzz that comes from this was very interesting, making it feel so much more alcoholic than it really is, this of course is from the Herb mixture.

My next experiment with Gruit is going to be my spiced holiday red, which will be heavly spiced anyway, so I'm hoping that will make the inclusion of alternate bittering methods less noticable.