# Plannin' a gruit!



## TimT (31/1/16)

Marsh rosemary (check!), bog myrtle (check!), yarrow (check!) - it seems I have all the necessary ingredients in my very house to make a proper medieval-style gruit ale. 

Now this is not quite something I've ever done before - all my experiments with herbal brewing do give me some idea as to how I might go about it, but research on these subjects can be important. I've looked at other recipes online and they're patchy at best: other brewers have done it as a once off; there may be some who make gruit ales their specialty but I don't know of them.

The website Gruit Ale has several recipes involving the basic gruit ingredients - marsh rosemary, bog myrtle, yarrow - all seeming to involve similar quantities of herbs: 

Here's the last linked recipe: 

*INGREDIENTS & METHOD*

*Ingredients*

1 gallon water
1 2/4 pounds pale malt
1 1/2 pounds CaraPils (or crystal malt)
1 1/2 grams Bog myrtle
1 1/2 grams Wild rosemary
1 1/2 grams Yarrow

*Method*


Heat water to 170 degrees, pour onto malted grains 
enough water to make stiff mash. Let stand, covered,
for three hours.
Sparge slowly with 170 degree water until one gallon
total liquid is acquired. Boil wort and herbs for 1 1/2 hours.
Cool to 70 degrees F and strain. 
Pour into fermenter and add yeast. 
Ferment until completion. 
Prime bottles, siphon and cap. 
Store four months before drinking.
The recipe comes from Stephen Harrod Buhner's book on herbal brewing, which he got from brewer John Harrison. 
Thoughts: 

- The herb quantities seem *very* small, even for a small 5 L batch. Presumably they have a combined effect on the flavour of the brew but even so it doesn't seem like much. 

- I'm not at all sure about the worth of boiling all the herbs or even any of the herbs - perhaps it will suffice to add them all at the end of the boil as a kind of tea? With further additions during fermentation to maximise floral/aromatic smell? 

- In my experience, early brewing herbs don't do nearly so much masking as hops do, so sour yeast-created acids can become much more dominant in a herbal brew. For this reason, it might be an idea to maximise bitterness in the brew somehow - perhaps by adding more bog myrtle (it has a kind of aromatic tanniny bitterness) or perhaps by adding a fourth herb: mugwort perhaps. 

My aims for my brew? First up I'd go for a mid-strength easy-drinking ale that is somewhere between a pale and a brown. I don't imagine the delicate plant flavours would go brilliantly well with a dark beer - and brown ale is arguably more traditional*. I'm especially interested in getting plenty of delicate floral aromas, so I'll probably add a lot in during fermentation. And I want the contributions of each herb to be noticeable but complementary to the rest of the ale - so, a nice maltiness and an interesting munchy herbal quality to the drink - with a strong bitterness to hold the whole thing up. So I'll probably modify this recipe in that direction.

Well, that's the plan anyway. I'll keep tinkering away and doing research - so I'm not going to brew this straightaway.

Thoughts and comments and suggestions and links to good gruit recipes welcome! 

*_Though maybe we shouldn't argue about it now.** _
_**Arr, who am I kidding. Argue away. _


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## wide eyed and legless (31/1/16)

What will the shelf life be Tim?


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## Mardoo (31/1/16)

wide eyed and legless said:


> What will the shelf life be Tim?


5L??? A week or so...


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## wide eyed and legless (31/1/16)

Tim says he is making 10 litres, just wondering without hops if the life of the gruit is short lived.


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## TimT (31/1/16)

Lack of hops won't matter too much. Once you've brewed your brew and got it sealed up nothing else can get in. For a higher alcohol gruit - one of those recipes is linked above - the alcohol itself will be a powerful preservative. 

But I'm thinking it will be best for drinking fairly fresh: because, for one thing, some of the herb flavours and smells may fade over time. For another, many of the traditional gruits must have been drunk mid-fermentation: ie, brewed by mum at home, drank over breakfast one or two mornings after.

But, I think the standard 'beer will keep improving over 5 weeks' rule is a good one.


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## wide eyed and legless (31/1/16)

I am really interested as to how it turns out, my reading is that it was made in small batches as it wouldn't keep but we are going back 600 years ago, don't know how true it is but the English were slow to take up the hops option the CAMRA of the day refused to accept hops in ale and was backed up by Henry VIII, not sure if anyone lost their head over the use of hops though.
Another interesting observation is the Romans in Britain used to force the hops and eat them like asparagus


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## TimT (31/1/16)

Heh. 

A rant against gruit, "beer's most evil style"


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## TimT (31/1/16)

Some posts like this are informative.

I'm not sure whether I believe that marsh rosemary was usually not used in combination with myrica gale as they didn't grow in the same parts of the world (as if people didn't, y'know, trade stuff!). Though it does suggest that marsh rosemary may not be necessary.

I may use honey in the brew as it has some preservative qualities.


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## TimT (31/1/16)

Randy Mosher's gruit recipe. He doesn't like yarrow for some reason which I can never work out.


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## TimT (31/1/16)

Hey, February 1 is International Gruit Day! The date is auspicious!


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## TimT (1/2/16)

Bump for the perspicacious Monday readers! And here's a link to another helpful gruit recipe, this time with some very informative comments. 

Another thought I had today was to use a certain quantity of ginger and galangal in the recipe, as they will add a certain firey spiciness to the brew that will help to counteract any sourness - and their flavour seems like a good complement to the floral/herbal flavours of the traditional gruit recipe.


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## Feldon (1/2/16)

The history of how hops displaced gruit is covered in the book _Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers _which you can read part of on Google Books:

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=ss2QAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA174&dq=gruit&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjFkZDnudXKAhXG36YKHRSYCAcQ6AEIMTAE#v=onepage&q=gruit&f=false

If you scroll down to p.175 you'll find several recipes (eg. Gruit Ale, Myrica Ale, Wild Rosemary Ale).


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## TimT (1/2/16)

Yeah I know - that's where the linked recipe above came from. As Buhner notes (and I do above) he sourced the recipe from brewer John Harrison. Good book!


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## crowmanz (1/2/16)

Nice! I have been thinking about brewing a gruit since I got back from Europe and went to Ghent which is home to Gentse Gruut. They only brew gruit beers and have a Blonde, Wheat, Amber, Brown and Inferno. I tasted the blonde and amber and have bottles of the Wheat and Inferno still to try.


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## TimT (12/3/16)

I've got a gruit sitting on the bench settling down, waiting to be bottled, probably tomorrow morning. 

In the end I didn't follow any of those recipes provided in detail, and for convenience sake I added a good deal more gruit herbs than outlined in any of those recipes (ie, it was easier to dump the whole packet in). 

My brew went down from about 1.060 to 1.023 and I doubt it's going to go down much further. (I'll test the gravity again tomorrow morning before bottling). The taste of the herbs is not overwhelming - I get a little sweetness and a little sourness from the fermented malt, with some light intriguing floral smells from the yarrow flowers. A little honey was added during primary ferment which I believe has given it some more sweetness and added to some of the floral notes. 

The taste is nice and herbal, with a strong bitter backbone from the mugwort, and a lighter, wilder note from the marsh rosemary, bog myrtle and yarrow. 

Though I wasn't planning for this to happen, a wild yeast decided to do the fermenting job for me.  

Only downside so far is the wild yeast did a good job quickly and while I was letting it clean up in the last few days it's possible a bacteria has moved in. I've shaken the whole thing up and hopefully if I bottle tomorrow yeast will be able to move in again during the secondary ferment. If not I've got a nice little still ale.


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## klangers (15/3/16)

Interesting.

Tim, can one purchase these herbs through a local nursery or, as I suspect, are they rare and difficult to source?


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## TimT (15/3/16)

Klangers, it depends from herb to herb. 

Mugwort is fairly easy to find, a commonly grown plant and a relative of the even-more common wormwood (which can also be used in brewing - Mugwort tastes nicer, though.) Dried mugwort is sold at many herbalists. 

Yarrow is also quite common. It's a pretty flower and a lawn substitute that will often grow quite prolifically in your garden. Also often sold at herbalists (though for best results you'll want to chuck the flowers in - and that's usually not found at herbalists). 

Marsh rosemary is probably the hardest to find. I got some from an overseas supplier on Tealyra. It may be sold as 'Labrador tea', or 'marsh rosemary'. 

Bog Myrtle is sold at Bogmyrtle.com, a Scottish supplier. It's a very nice plant that you might also be able to find sold at herbalists, under several names - 'bog myrtle', 'sweet gale', 'bayberry' or 'myrica gale'.

I suspect marsh rosemary and bog myrtle don't grow well in Australian conditions - I haven't seen them in any plant nursery websites.


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## TimT (15/3/16)

For other folks planning on brewing a gruit I would just say - expect tartness; absent a strong hot bitter flavour such as you get from hops, many of the natural fermented flavours will be much more prominent and seem much more extreme. So, expect tart/sour and design your recipes accordingly. Mine is basically a pale (so there won't be any added acidity from the chocolate malts - which is usually too overwhelming for modern palates) and I hope the relatively large quantities of herbs I added during the boil (especially mugwort) will give it some bitter backbone. 

If I was doing a brown or a black gruit I'd probably structure it around a stronger herb - the strongly bitter gentian, for instance, or horehound.


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## klangers (15/3/16)

Hmmmm. The mention of wormwood pricked my ears up - Absinthe Ale anyone?


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## TimT (15/3/16)

I fear wormwood. I made one beer with it and it was undrinkable - the flavour is so strong. But it is a good bitter for that reason; you probably only need a slight sprinkle to get that peculiar essence. Mugwort is a better herb; it has much more pleasant, tea-like flavours that are more prominent than the typical _Artemisia _bitterness (which it also has). 

There seem to be a few herbs that change the quality of a whole brew and take charge of it, as it were. Hops are one. Wormwood is another. Horehound is a third. Gentian, a fourth. 

So I'm not saying don't do it - just be very careful - very effing careful indeed.


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## TimT (15/3/16)

Secondary ferment appears to be under way in the bottles; my plan will be to drink these fairly fresh. Looking forward to when they're ready.


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## Matplat (15/3/16)

Considering a wild yeast got in, and you say some bacteria has also made it's home... doesn't that add a bit of ambiguity to the flavour profile generated?


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## TimT (15/3/16)

I suppose so. I've brewed a number of herbal beers though so I've some idea what to expect, and it didn't taste so weird in that context.


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## Matplat (15/3/16)

I'd be very interested to try some, but not sure if I would be game to brew a whole batch without having some idea of what I'm getting in to. Did you try someone elses herbal beer that piqued your interest?


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## TimT (18/3/16)

^Missed this comment, sorry. No, I do it mostly out of interest for historical methods of brewing, and partly to break out of the 'hops all the time' mentality. Oh, that, and a fondness for weirdness ...


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## TimT (18/3/16)

Let's think. Okay, so you may be able to find a few Belgian lambics and the like that feature fruit and herbs prominently. There are one or two classic ales that have gruit herbs - you may be able to buy 'Fraoch heather ale' which contains heather, bog myrtle, and ginger. 

Secondly, there are teas which actually do feature some old ale flavourings. Dandelion tea (dandelion root or dandelion leaf) is one. Lemon balm tea is another. (And of course mint teas in general.)

Thirdly, you can occasionally pick up a non-alcoholic soft drink that probably originally started out as an alcoholic drink: the classic is ginger beer or ginger ale. (They were probably commonly alcoholic even at the height of Temperance!) There are others: Sarsaparilla Ale, or apparently you can buy a Dandelion and Burdock Ale. 

Or brew yourself! But - expect some tartness. That's inevitable. If you are doing anything other than a pale I'd strongly recommend a base bittering herb, like horehound or gentian.


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## Feldon (18/3/16)

Keep posting, Tim.

Always interesting.


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## TimT (18/3/16)

Today I'm all about the _glechoma hederacae_, or alehoof. Did a mash this morning: 1 kilo Maris Otter, 1 kilo Rye, 9 L of water (after boil), 55 g of alehoof in the boil. Simple! Gravity is 1.053, which I'm not too displeased about. 

Alehoof has a definite quality - tanniny and minty, with a fresh herb aroma and taste that I'm hoping will stay at end of fermentation. It also seems to be enhancing some of the malty flavours, though again, we'll see at the end of ferment. As the name suggests, it's a classic brewing herb. Looking forward to pouring a completed one of those out of the bottle in a few weeks .


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## Coodgee (18/3/16)

Interesting thread. Good shit! And good luck to all the 'erb brewers mon.


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## Matplat (19/3/16)

Have you got books on this? How do you generate a recipe? Surely you would go through a few too many dud batches if you have to work out herb quantities/boil timing/ferment additions if you have to work it all out by yourself...?


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## TimT (19/3/16)

Oh yeah, there's Stephen Harrod-Buhner's classic book of weird arsery _Sacred Herbal and Healing Brews _or maybe it's _Sacred Healing and Herbal Brews, _but whatever. I always get it mixed up. I find his herb quantities are usually reliable and his advice on the properties of various herbs is useful as well. It's definitely not a book for hop heads - he admits he doesn't like them much and doesn't bother with different varieties of hops. 

Country wine books often have good information in them. I have another with recipes for nettle meads, fruit wines, etc. In that respect country wine brewers seem receptive to ideas about herbal brewing in ways that beer brewers sometimes aren't. I have a few country wine books on my shelf with info on that. 

I'll dig them up when I've got a bit more time and reference them here.


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## TimT (19/3/16)

But yes, there have been duds....


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## TimT (19/3/16)

Here we go, here's a list of some of the relevant books: 

_Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers_, Stephen Harrod Buhner - different perspectives from a naturalist.

_Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery and Booke of Sweetmeats_, transcribed by Karen Hess - some very interesting old recipes for beer, mead and cheese are included within. Insight into both early US cookery and 17th/18th century English cookery.

_Country Wines & Cordials: Wild Plant & Herbal Recipes for Drinks Old & New_, Wilma Paterson - that's the ticket! Now we're getting into that time when brewing was mostly in charge of batty old cat ladies who lived in hovels (hey, I mean that in a nice way! (Okay, full disclosure: the book was printed in 1980)). Few beer recipes, but there is a very interesting recipe for 'barley posset'.

_Old-time recipes for Home Made Wines, Cordials and LIquers_, Helen S. Wright - lots of folky recipes here, stuff like 'Tomato Beer' and 'Pea Beer' and, a lovely idea, 'Ebulum' - strong ale with elderberries, juniper, and spices. Also the inevitable spruce beer and molasses beer and root beer.

_The Art of Fermentation_, Sandor Ellix Katz - Katz is an all-round enthusiast about fermentation but there is some good stuff in here about wild-fermented beers, lambics, and meads.

_The Drunken Botanist_, Amy Stewart - this one was a library borrowing but it gave me plenty of ideas. The focus is mainly on plants in spirits.

_From the Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby, Knight_, Sir Kenelm Digby - I use the online Gutenberg version. Aside from his voluminous section on meads, there's a fabulous slipcoat cheese recipe in there, and plenty of other stuff too. Also ale and cider recipes. (Additional note: Digby has plenty of weird and wonderful additions to his meads - old herbs like galingale (galangal) and odd ones like pennyroyal. Basically he throws everything but the kitchen sink into his brews, and if kitchen sinks had been invented in his time, he probably would throw them in as well. But the book _is _an extremely useful guide to historical brewing herbs). 

Stolen from my old post here.


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## wide eyed and legless (19/3/16)

With your knowledge of herbs Tim you should have a crack at Campari.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFXx2ibS8T8


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## TimT (26/3/16)

Well, I had some gruit yesterday and it was very pleasant. The herbs (which admittedly I went a little over the top with) all combined together to have a kind of pot pourri effect - very lovely on the nose, with a nice savoury-spicy-bitter flavour that balanced out the sweet and sour of the beer. If anything the drink seemed to have a slightly stimulating effect on me.

It's a little undercarbed and next time I'd go for a lower gravity (from memory it finished up around 1.025, but hey, that ain't bad for a wild yeast). Hopefully it'll carb up a little more with time. 

As for the alehoof brew, that has been bottled and secondary ferment should be underway now. The fresh minty flavours seem to have mostly gone, but once it's chilled and mature hopefully I should sense more of the herby qualities from the alehoof additions. 

Gruit ahoy!


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## Matplat (5/4/16)

I actually found a section in one of the brewing books i have about making a gruit, and meant to post the info up here but alas, my memory never works at the right time!


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## TimT (5/4/16)

Please do! Was it a gruit without hops or with hops? (Many of the recipes on gruitale.com contain hops as well).


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## TimT (5/4/16)

(Not sure how the double up post happened but mods, would someone please be able to clean up the mess I made, wah wah, I'm a big baby....)


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## mr_wibble (5/4/16)

Gruits were a often secret blend of herbs. Controlled by the Chruch, then later the Big Wigs.

Stuff I've read (mostly from the books TimT mentions above) asserts that for the most part, there is no reliable recipe for historical gruits.

So why are gruits divided into Hopped Vs NON-Hopped?

Hops impart a pleasant bittering, surely they would bring good things into any gruit. 
I guess one could argue that now-days we use a single-ingredient gruit.


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## TimT (5/4/16)

_So why are gruits divided into Hopped Vs NON-Hopped?_

_Hops impart a pleasant bittering, surely they would bring good things into any gruit. _


Agree. Also people today will talk of a single herb beer as being a gruit brew which seems to be historically quite inaccurate. 

But I think it's good to be flexible around definitions. 

I suppose I just don't want hops to dominate my brewing! Hence my particular focus.


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## mr_wibble (7/4/16)

I figured that a lot of the secret gruits might have contained hops - maybe not dominated by them, but at least as a component.

But then there is that law to segregate Ale (gruit of anything except hops) & beer (anything+hops) in 13-14th century England.
(ref: http://zythophile.co.uk/false-ale-quotes/myth-two-hops-were-forbidden-by-henry-vi/ ) 
But that's only England though.


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## TimT (7/4/16)

Yes it really does get very speculative when we get way back into the era of ale in every house - when ale was brewed every day, who would bother writing down all the recipes?


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## Feldon (7/4/16)

Its very difficult to take yourself back to medieval times, but you can look at the historical evidence that is available and come to some reasonable conclusions.

What comes to my mind is the seasonality of flavours, particularly sweetness. In northern Europe in winter you were shut up inside for months at a time because of the severe cold, with occasional brief forays outdoors (eg. to attend church, raid the dovecote for meat, and collect firewood - sticks and branches that fell from high up on trees because of the weight of snow). Your livestock was locked up too, in your house or in a barn (these were the animals remaining after you had butchered the rest of them in autumn because you didn't have enough hay in storage to keep them all alive until spring).

In this acrid, smoky household environment the taste of fresh ale with residual sweetness and little or no bitterness must have been a much anticipated joy, especially in contrast to the monotonous bitter and sour foods you were eating towards the end of winter - eg. rancid bacon and pickled vegetables. Come spring and summer there was sweetness in abundance, with honey, fruit and the sweet lactose in milk from your cows grazing on lush green pasture (as opposed to hay in winter).

The point I'm trying to make is that people were not chasing bitterness in their ale as we do now. Their preference would have been for sweetness because it was hard to get, particularly in winter. I disagree with those who propose that beer made today is the best beer ever made. For a start people did not drink beer until hops were used and that, in the long history of brewing, began five minutes ago. A lot of ale was drunk for a long time before and all the while hops were available.

If you had a time machine and took the finest of today's IPA back to medieval Europe they would probably spit it back in your face as horrible bitter piss. But people are very adaptable and tastes can be acquired and become rooted in culture if people are forced to adapt as happened with the Protestant Reformation.

As Tim has said earlier, the herbal mixture that was sold to be added to ale (gruit) up until the 1400s was a monopoly owned by the catholic monasteries. The rise of Protestantism was a reaction against the perceived excessive power and moral corruption within the Catholic church. Newly empowered protestant authorities ordered that gruit herbs be replaced with hops. It has been said that this was an economic attack on the catholic monopoly on gruit herbs. But consider also that the outlawing of gruit was perhaps an attempt by protestants to reduce vice and immorality.

The catholic church had many feast days. In the old church calendar there was some saint (great or small) to be commemorated just about every week. The protestant faith however frowned upon most of these feast days because of the drunkenness and debauchery that were exhibited at such events. In England in the early 1600s the extreme form of Protestantism known as Puritanism even banned the staging of plays because they were associated with excessive drinking and immorality.

The question I have is this. Was the dictate that gruit must end and hops be used to bitter ale (into beer) not just an economic attack on the catholic church's monopoly, but a move by protestant authorities to reduce the consumption of alcohol (and by association the sin of debauchery) by attempting to make beer less palatable? A similar move was apparently made in the time of Elizabeth I when it was decreed that lamb must be only be consumed with a bitter herb. This was at a time when England's economy was dependant on selling wool to the Low Countries, and it was a means to reduce the number of lambs being killed and being eaten by the peasants.

As I said people are very adaptable and rosemary soon became the bitter herb of preference to be taken with lamb, a tradition that survives to this day. And with beer the hop became not only accepted but sought after and bred into more palatable varieties. Such are the whims of fancies of the public taste.


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## TimT (7/4/16)

Good thoughts about brewing history Feldon. You make the point very well about the importance of seasonaility; I tend to think that the great variety of traditional brewing ingredients found - from the exceedingly gentle (yarrow, meadowsweet) to the superlatively bitter (hops, gentian) indicate a great variety of tastes. Certainly many herbs can be dried and stored over winter - to a certain extent, in a cool to cold, dry climate, I suppose you could do this with hops as well - and so a wide variety of beers must have been possible at all times of the year, in households with some means at their disposal, anyway. One thing which is of great interest to me at the moment is the influence of age in brews - alcohol being a powerful preservative, surely some brews must have been kept around for a very long time, and therefore of suitability for drinking in winter. 

The gradual favouring of hops over the other (arguably more ancient) gruit herbs must have occurred for many differing reasons. Stephen Harrod-Buhner does make some speculation about the attempt to ban hops being an attempt to favour 'protestant' brewers and end the Catholic monopoly; I'm not sure if he's the one who speculates that hops were favoured by protestants because of their sedative qualities - ie, they made for a sleepier, more docile workforce! 

I suppose the authorities may have been trying to make beer less palatable by specifying a particular ingredient but I'm not sure what the evidence for this would be. That the Puritans were against pleasure and celebration and drunkenness is perhaps more a cliche than a fact; one early definition of Puritans were that they "loued [loved] no Lenten fast"; ie, they didn't abide by the common fasts and were pleasure seekers.


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## Feldon (7/4/16)

Yes, the Puritans liked a piss up as much as anyone. But they generally opposed communal games and drinking at events like harvest festivals on the village green or festivities that were celebrated in and around the local ale house. These were events where your kids could fall into temptation, and where a good number of village virgins might be lured into the hedgerows and impregnated. Protestants preferred to keep their revelry at home where there was more control.

There's a discussion on Puritanism and its relationship to leisure pursuits (including the quote "loved no Lenten fast") at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=KVE6QCJSLgYC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=%22loved+no+lenten+fast%22&source=bl&ots=6zzXRsPArz&sig=W1CToPmdxFkuudZi2JQrU_yUXE8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiH95rX0PvLAhUpsIMKHbHpCBYQ6AEIGzAA#v=onepage&q=%22loved%20no%20lenten%20fast%22&f=false


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## Vini2ton (7/4/16)

Hmmmmm......hedgerows and ale-houses.


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## Fatgodzilla (11/5/16)

Heather ???????? 

looking at an upcoming brewing challenge replacing hops with herbs. Found references to heather as a gruit suitable additive. In all your investigations / readings, has anyone come across heather available in Australia for brewing ?


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## Matplat (15/5/16)

Just remembered I was going to post this! Somewhat delayed....

I don't quite understand the mash schedule, but it is what it is.


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## TimT (15/5/16)

It seems a version of the same recipe that Stephen Harrod-Buhner gives for gruit in his book. 

I still think the amount of herbs in that recipe seem underdone, as many herb qualities fade, as I've noticed in my gruit, and after two/three months in an oak barrel I'm not sure if much will remain. 

The conditioning with oak is an interesting touch though, and an oakiness may help to balance out the typical herbal beer sour/tart flavour. Is it authentic? I dunno - I think oakiness in some historical periods was considered a fault, and the inside of barrels were typically sealed (maybe with wax? Pitch?) But who knows whether this was common practice in the middle ages? Interesting anyway.


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## TimT (15/5/16)

I don't know who sells heather, sorry, and it's probably not a plant that is well accustomed to the Australian climate. I'd try looking for it on Tealyra or overseas brewing supply stores.


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## manticle (15/5/16)

Fatgodzilla said:


> Heather ????????
> 
> looking at an upcoming brewing challenge replacing hops with herbs. Found references to heather as a gruit suitable additive. In all your investigations / readings, has anyone come across heather available in Australia for brewing ?


Pretty sure Yob did a heather ale a year or so ago - might be worth a PM


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## manticle (15/5/16)

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/51193-heather-ale/


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## TimT (15/5/16)

Yeah I got some off Yob that one time. Mine didn't turn out brilliantly, I found it a delicate flavour so maybe it's good with other floral element (eg, the trad gruit combo of yarrow, bog myrtle, and marsh rosemary).


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## TimT (25/5/16)

Just leaving this as a note here - yesterday I cracked a bottle of my one year old dandelion and honey stout that I'd made entirely without hops. Last year it was undrinkable - much too tart. Now the tartness appears to have mostly aged out (there's still some). The honey and dandelion is coming through much stronger now, too. 

So that could be a solution for brewing dark beers without hops. Just leave them aside for a year. Forget about them for another year. Remember them in the third year sometime and - party!


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## Feldon (4/1/18)

A brewery in Boston in the US released a gruit late last year for women going through menopause. 

Sold out in in a flash.

Key ingredients were :

motherwort (hot flashes, night sweats), lemon balm (stress, anxiety), chamomile (moodiness, insomnia), stinging nettle (liver support, weight fluctuations), mugwort (stress, anxiety), rose (skin tone, heart palpitations), chickweed (fat build-up, dryness), and damania (loss of sexual desire, nervousness).

https://www.forbes.com/sites/taranu...ts-more-than-a-flash-in-the-pan/#57681ab74ad3


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