Gruit Gose

[Albionwood]

A friend asked me to come up with a gruit version of Gose. Fortunately I have another friend who is familiar with the style and techniques for making Gose, and this turned into a fun collaboration project.

Gose is an ideal beer to flavor with gruit herbs. It is a light, tart beer with no bitterness and little to no hop character, and it is a style that probably extends back to the gruit era. The classic version is typically flavored with Coriander and salt. It is also a great choice for no-boil brewing.

We basically made a regular Gose and then flavored it with gruit herbs, experimenting with blends and proportions until we found a nice balance. Here's the final recipe:

21 Liter batch
OG- 1.033
FG - 1.005
ABV 3.6%
Target Mash Temp - 64 C
No Boil
Kettle culture: Lactobacillus plantarum
Yeast: WL 644 Sacch "Brux" Trois

Grist:
50% Pilsner (1.6 kg)
50% White Wheat Malt (1.6 Kg)

Kettle Additions
18 g cracked Coriander
9 g Sea Salt

Gruit:
44 g dried Dandelion Root
22 g fresh Yarrow flowers (or 44 g dried)
11 g dried Mugwort
(Optional) 10 g dried Chamomile flowers

One day before brew day: Make starter cultures of Lactobacillus and yeast.

Brew day: Mash and lauter as usual, collect wort in kettle. Add salt, heat to 82C, turn off heat and chill to 49 C. Add active Lactobacillus culture, and blanket the wort with CO2. Cover kettle tightly to exclude air, and insulate it to keep warm for 24 to 36 hours or until pH drops below 3.7 (ideally 3.5).
When desired level of sourness is reached, heat wort to 82C again to kill the Lactobacillus, chill to 21 C, and pitch yeast. Ferment to completion, about 5 to 7 days, at 21 to 24 C.

Add the Dandelion Root to one liter of water, bring to boil, simmer about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and add remaining herbs. Let steep a few minutes. Strain out the herbs and add this tisane to the beer. (A large filter-coffee press worked perfectly for this.) Chill, transfer to keg and carbonate to 3 volumes.

The finished beer is light, dry, refreshingly tart, with a subtle earthiness from the root, a nice herbal-tea character from the mugwort, and a bright floral character from the coriander and yarrow. We kept the gruit character light so it is really drinkable, with a subtle but lingering aftertaste that leaves you ready for the next mouthful.

I split off a small batch and added some Chamomile, which produced a distinct fruity character that complemented the other flavors. Be really careful though, it's easy to overdo this herb in a light beer like this.

 

[radwizard]

Wow. That looks pretty cool. Ill have to give it a whirl sometime soon. Where did you source all your herbs and flowers? Is this all stuff you can find at Whole Foods, or something like?

 

[Albionwood]

Where did you source all your herbs and flowers?

Dandelion Root and Mugwort both came from a local health-food store/hippie grocery with an amazing selection of herbs and spices. I have no idea if Whole Paycheck stocks these; the nearest one of those is 2.5 hours drive from here. The Yarrow came from my driveway... it is a naturalized weed here. But dried Yarrow is also available from the same store.

You can also order gruit ingredients from Wild Weeds: http://www.wildweeds.com/

 

[Miraculix]

Thanks, I am going to give an adapted version with spelt malt instead of wheat and mugwort, yarrow and sweet gale as the herbal part a try beginning of next year. Will use wild lactos though. I got to make some Sauerkraut anyway

 

[Albionwood]

Turns out the Lacto culture we used works quite slowly, and our pH drop was less than intended. Although my meter read 3.7 after 24 hours, the finished beer had a pH of 3.9 as measured in a brewery lab. So the tartness is there but very subdued, leaving a lot of wheat flavor, making it taste somewhat sweet. An interesting effect and one I actually quite like in this particular beer - the herbal character really plays well with the lacto-fermented wheat character.

Miraculix, do you plan to kill off the wild bugs after kettle souring? If not, you are likely to end up with a very sour beer. L. plantarum tends to level off at a pH of 3.5 or so, whereas wild bacteria can easily go much lower. Might still be good but will have a very different character than this beer. The yeast choice probably also has a big effect in a beer this small.

 

[Miraculix]

Turns out the Lacto culture we used works quite slowly, and our pH drop was less than intended. Although my meter read 3.7 after 24 hours, the finished beer had a pH of 3.9 as measured in a brewery lab. So the tartness is there but very subdued, leaving a lot of wheat flavor, making it taste somewhat sweet. An interesting effect and one I actually quite like in this particular beer - the herbal character really plays well with the lacto-fermented wheat character.

Miraculix, do you plan to kill off the wild bugs after kettle souring? If not, you are likely to end up with a very sour beer. L. plantarum tends to level off at a pH of 3.5 or so, whereas wild bacteria can easily go much lower. Might still be good but will have a very different character than this beer. The yeast choice probably also has a big effect in a beer this small.

Maybe I will pasteurise it to around 65 to 70 degrees. Maybe this is actually a quite good way to control unintentional souring, first souring intentionally to a certain level and pasteurising which then inhibits further souring when the yeast is starting to work.

 

[Albionwood]

I think that is a good method. It worked for this beer anyway!
Are you planning to add the gruit before souring, or after fermentation? If later, then you'll need to heat-pasteurize them if you don't want more souring.

 

[anteater8]

So you're boiling your herbs, straining and cooling the water, and adding that directly to the keg? That's an intriguing technique.

I had some good luck recently "dry hopping" a sour with elderflower, heather and orange zest. No herbs in the boil, just a small amount of hops.

 

[Miraculix]

I think that is a good method. It worked for this beer anyway!
Are you planning to add the gruit before souring, or after fermentation? If later, then you'll need to heat-pasteurize them if you don't want more souring.

I would add it upfront, let those lactose have a nice and relaxing herbal bath

 

[Albionwood]

So you're boiling your herbs, straining and cooling the water, and adding that directly to the keg? That's an intriguing technique.

I had some good luck recently "dry hopping" a sour with elderflower, heather and orange zest. No herbs in the boil, just a small amount of hops.

Yep, that's about it. I boiled the Dandelion root, turned off the heat and added the Yarrow and Mugwort and let it steep like a tea, then added the liquid. A filter press for coffee worked perfectly.

Dry-herbing will usually sour a beer, unlike dry-hopping. If you're souring it anyway, this might not be a big concern, though the wild bugs might give you a different character than a cultured strain. We wanted a certain kind of sourness from the Lactobacillus culture, so we heat-pasteurized after kettle-souring and then took care to avoid contamination during and after fermentation.

If we hadn't hot-steeped the herbs, there's a high probability we would have had film yeast, Pedio, and who knows what else growing on the beer. That might produce interesting results, but in a beer this light, I think there is too much risk of a nasty flavor spoiling the effect.

 

[Albionwood]

Update: I served the last of this beer at a party last night. It was still delicious and went down very well, even with the people who had no idea what it was! No trace of infection.