Just to be precise, I didn't mean that it is impossible to brew a non - hopped beer without it being sour, I meant that it is unlikely that it works. Lactos are literally everywhere, your sanitation practice can be as good as possible, but without real lab conditions, you will always have some lactos in your fermenter. That's where the hops then do their job.
The easy way.... I am brewing a lot like this
Yes, Susan's paper acknowledges that the modern definition of a gruit is an herbal un-hopped beer (page 3):
As I am not trying to make a historic recreation of a German or Dutch gruit from the 1500s, but rather trying to make a modern beer without the use of hops. Therefor I am comfortable using the word "gruit" to describe what I am attempting. And I do find the history quite interesting, and like to see what people used as clues to inform me on ingredients that taste good without being dangerous and/or help the beer not sour. While I can use the modern supply chain to buy nearly any ingredient I want, I am trying to create something enjoyable to drink with local plants. And I am growing my own hops as another way I can achieve my goals, but I want to see what else is possible. And being able to continue my hobby without quite as much phytoestrogens is another benefit.Susan Verberg said:
Phytoestrogens where exactly why I got into the herbal beer thing.
They are two completely different plants, they have only the name in common.
So I steeped 1 teaspoon of several herbs in a cup of boiling water (making a tea, in other words) and here are my personal taste impressions. I'm curious to see how they compare to those of everyone else here.| Gruit Herb | Bitterness (0-5) | Sweetness (0-5) | Astringency (0-5) | Vegetal (0-5) | Other |
| St. John's Wort | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | Black tea |
| Yarrow | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | Fresh garden herbs (parsley, celery, veggy soupstuff). Chlorophyll? |
| Meadowsweet | 2 | 1 | 3 | 2 | Aromatic. Dried leaves, mulch, autumn forest |
| Horehound | 4 | 0 | 4 | 0 | Woody, slight peppery notes |
| Mugwort | 1 | 1 | 3 | 2 | Cut grass, hay. Chlorophyll? |
| Sage | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3 | Dried garden herbs. Thyme? Marjoram? |
Good point!
I'll experiment with that too, but later when work is less pressing. I'll probably end up steeping Quassia and Wormwood and diluting that (starting with, say, a drop of extract per cup of water) to assess the character of their bitterness.
I'm in South Africa were I can't get all that. So I'm focusing on what I have (which should be more than enough to get me started towards a good gruit beer) an take it from there.Thanks Frank, that is helpful. I have wormwood, marsh labrador, white sage, and both frankincense and myrrh to try. I've been thinking I want to use at least an ounce of hops for the antimicrobial benefits. Maybe make a small batch first.
Not sure. I can't get it here, so I'm looking at Sage for that purpose. Shame... Myrrh combined with Frankincense would make for a good Xmas beer!
South Africa (where I live) is a former Commonwealth country so to all intents and purposes we use Church Of England measurements. But to me a cup is simply 250ml. However, since all herbs were steeped in the same volume and this was mostly about how they compare, a few ml more or less water hardly matters here.
I think it is worth mentioning that there are many different versions of phytoestrogens and they each work differently so a comparison is not that simple.I'd like to add a few footnotes on the perceived problems with phytoestrogens in hops. Which, in short, are generally grossly over-estimated. Research in this field continues, but a few key points have clearly emerged in recent years.
Yes, phytoetrogens in hops do have some effect, but this manifests itself mostly as a short-term fluctuation in hormone levels in the blood, but not enough to be a cause of concern. The perceived effects take long-term changes of hormone baseline levels; a fluctuation for a few hours has little or no effect. Alcohol, not hormones, appears to be the key factor here. Compared to the dangers of alcohol that we are all familiar with, the effect of phytoestrogen is minimal at best.
- Our diet includes many natural sources of phytoestrogen. Foods most well known for containing phytoestrogen include flax seed, soy and soy-derived proteins (e.g. tofu), fruits, nuts, beans, peas, lentils, and a variety of cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, Brussels sprouts, watercress and radishes. But these are not the only ones by far. In fact, almost all vegetables, legumes and seeds that we eat (including wheat and rice) contain some phytoestrogen, although the amount varies.
- The feminisation symptoms observed in male alcoholics, especially gynaecomastia ("man boobs") and hypogonadism (which is the medical term referring to shrinkage of the male genitals) exist not only in beer drinkers but also in alcoholics who exclusively drink distilled spirits. This suggests that alcohol, not beer, is the prime factor in causing these symptoms. This appears to be consistent with impaired liver function which in turn reduces the removal of extrogens from the blood.
- While hops contain a particularly potent form of phytoestrogen, the amount of this that actually ends up in your beerglass is relatively low. This does of course depend on the beer style: highly hopped American styles such as IPAs and New England IPAs contain more hops, and therefore more hop-derived phytoestrogens, than a moderately hopped Berliner Weizen. Phytoestrogens also tend to bond with proteins, which means that during the brewing process a significant amount of them will end up in the break material that is left behind at the bottom of the kettle.
- Your average vegetarian will typically ingest far more phytoestrogen than what you can get from moderate beer consumption. While it is beer that has the reputation of making a man less manly, tofu can be as bad or worse! Yet few male vegetarians worry about it, and with good reason: it is simply not a problem.
Disclaimer: I am not a trained medical professional. See your doctor if concerns about drinking give you a headache.
True. Which is why the common perception that "hops cause estrogen effects" is also far too undifferentiated.
Being an expatriate Dutchman myself, I can tell you that the English and the Dutch didn't get along too well in those days, and that the Dutch diet of the time was also high in fat and starches. Interestingly, at the same time the Dutch had (and, to a certain extent, still have) the same opinion of their Eastern neighbors. (No offense!)
Strangely enough, facial lipodystrophy ("fat face"), if not caused by diet and/or as part of obesity, is primarily related to an excess of steroid hormones such as cortisol, costicosterone, cortisone and aldosterone. Phytoestrogen intake elevates none of these significantly; if anything, they tend do lower it.
Did you read the papers published by Susanne? They are linked to somewhere here in the thread, there is one particular one about history of gruit and also the specific definition. You're covering a bit of it but I think this paper might be interesting for your to read as it let's some of the aspects shine in a bit of a different light.True. Which is why the common perception that "hops cause estrogen effects" is also far too undifferentiated.
Being an expatriate Dutchman myself, I can tell you that the English and the Dutch didn't get along too well in those days, and that the Dutch diet of the time was also high in fat and starches. Interestingly, at the same time the Dutch had (and, to a certain extent, still have) the same opinion of their Eastern neighbors. (No offense!)
Strangely enough, facial lipodystrophy ("fat face"), if not caused by diet and/or as part of obesity, is primarily related to an excess of steroid hormones such as cortisol, costicosterone, cortisone and aldosterone. Phytoestrogen intake elevates none of these significantly; if anything, they tend do lower it.
But that's getting more into the medical side of things (and beyond my qualifications) than it is about brewing. So let me not digress too far. To return to brewing: hops replaced gruit for several reasons.
Gruit herbs, especially certain widely used combinations, were to a large extent hallucinogenic and/or had a significant stimulating effect, and were therefore widely used in pagan rituals. (Think druids cavorting naked in the woods during the Beltane fertility rites, and let your imagination take it from there!) This was the late middle ages when the Catholic church was on a mission to eradicate paganism, and suppressing the herbs required for pagan ritual went a long way towards that goal. Also, gruit tended to make the brew more potent and tended to cause more intoxication; it lowered the inhibitions and generally made for a much rowdier party where things got indiscriminate more often than not. Hops did not act as a stimulant but instead are a mild soporific, which means the party tended to end earlier before things could get out of hand so much. This suited Church leaders who frowned upon the frivolities induced by many gruit blends.
Also, gruit consists mostly of wild herbs that could be found and harvested anywhere, while hop was grown on farms as a crop. This made hops controllable and taxable, which gruit could never really be. The Church was after control, and taxation provides a means to control many things as well as provide revenue. This was yet another nail in gruit's coffin.
The gruit->hop transition also came at a time when the brewing industry was in the process of being regulated to protect the food industry. Since water was lethal to drink at the time due to widespread bacterial contamination (the idea of keeping your drinking water supply separate from your sewage had not gained much foothold yet) so beer was enormously popular. Anything that could be made to ferment somewhat was used for brewing, and grains for baking bread and the like became scarce, leading to excessive food prices.
So the time was right to put everything into one set of legislation. The Reinheitsgebot of the early 1500s killed many crows with one stone: it protected the food industry; it eradicated pagan herbs, it put a stop to excessive celebration, it allowed beer production to be controlled, regulated and taxed, and it put the Church in an increased position of power. And the rest is history.
Also, in a remarkable feat of marketing, all of this was sold to the population as purity legislation intended to ensure the quality of beer, and it has survived as such over the course of the next five centuries!
In short, while phytoestrogens are real and do have a place in physiology, their overall contribution to the perceived effects of having a pint are grossly overestimated. That said, brewing with gruit is fun and opens up a whole range of experimentation (pharmacological or otherwise). At the same time, hop just simply tastes good in beer. So we all win in the end!
Not sure. I can't get it here, so I'm looking at Sage for that purpose. Shame... Myrrh combined with Frankincense would make for a good Xmas beer!
That's what I thought. You may be able to get F&M as bulk incense on the web.
I'll see if I can find them. Incidentally, my sister is a historian and archeologist, and she has quite a bit of material on the subject as well.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/the-gruit-beer-thread.629637/page-6#post-8337055
I thank you, kind sir!!
