Medieval mead ideas, help a geek out

[Susan Verberg]

I am still on my quest on finding a beer without hops that I could say the same about.

I will bottle a bog myrtle, mugwort, ground Ivy beer tonight, brewed with a saison yeast.

The idea was to use a yeast that eats almost all of the sugars so that there is no sugar left for lactos. This beer is promising but I might have used a bit too much of the herbs but let's see how it tastes.

The bog myrtle beer we made was with roasted barley (for a smokey flavor) and bog myrtle, no other herbs. We're trying to replicate historic gruit ale and mugwort and ground ivy are not part of that herb package. Not sure I would personally add those two either, as mugwort can be quite bittering and likely would overpower the bog myrtle flavors? Let me know how that works out.

About souring, gruit ales were made sweet and strong - the high level of alcohol would help preserve it. It would also have a short shelf life - up until the discovery of boiling the hops, ales were only sold and traded locally as they would spoil too quickly. So if you want to use the bog myrtle the way it was back then, it would be high alcoholic, on a wheat beer base (no or low amounts of barley), and sweet...

Proost!

 

[bernardsmith]

A short shelf life - perhaps, but I wonder whether people centuries ago did not expect their ales to taste "sour" in ways that today we don't. Sanitation was not their forte and LAB (lactic acid bacteria) must have soured just about every brew. LAB converting sugars into acids in the wort and later, in the beer, don't necessarily make the beer undrinkable anymore than LAB makes milk undrinkable when the bacteria transform the milk into yogurt or cheese, or vegetables into pickles..

 

[Miraculix]

The bog myrtle beer we made was with roasted barley (for a smokey flavor) and bog myrtle, no other herbs. We're trying to replicate historic gruit ale and mugwort and ground ivy are not part of that herb package. Not sure I would personally add those two either, as mugwort can be quite bittering and likely would overpower the bog myrtle flavors? Let me know how that works out.

About souring, gruit ales were made sweet and strong - the high level of alcohol would help preserve it. It would also have a short shelf life - up until the discovery of boiling the hops, ales were only sold and traded locally as they would spoil too quickly. So if you want to use the bog myrtle the way it was back then, it would be high alcoholic, on a wheat beer base (no or low amounts of barley), and sweet...

Proost!

I bought some smoked malt for the very same reason, to get some Smokey flavour into the gruit.

But this time, I focused on getting something drinkable and stable without hops and without high alcohol percentage, ignoring everything historic.

That's why I went for the saison yeast, it basically leaves nothing behind for the souring bacteria to chew on.

From previous tests I knew that bog myrtle and ground Ivy can prevent beer from souring. Not as good as hops do, but still a little bit, that's why I have chosen those two.

In a book about herbal beers I read that ground Ivy and mugwort multiply their effect on the human body when being used together, that's why I added it.

Let's see

I brewed with all of them before and they are kind of my personal top three taste wise, I just never combined them with a saison yeast.

 

[Susan Verberg]

A short shelf life - perhaps, but I wonder whether people centuries ago did not expect their ales to taste "sour" in ways that today we don't. Sanitation was not their forte and LAB (lactic acid bacteria) must have soured just about every brew. LAB converting sugars into acids in the wort and later, in the beer, don't necessarily make the beer undrinkable anymore than LAB makes milk undrinkable when the bacteria transform the milk into yogurt or cheese, or vegetables into pickles..

It is totally possible beers were more sour back then than we are used to! we won't know for sure until we put our hand on a deLorean

But I do find it interesting to read that gruit beer was described as sweet. And I know of another 17th c recipe of an early 16th c beer style (called Mol) that sweet and carbonated was a thing. This (purposely) soured beer would be primed with concentrated malt (malt extract) just before barreling to get a sweet & sour carbonated beverage. By the time carbonation ran out and the sugars were gone, the beer was deemed sour and not good to drink...