Gruit

[murrayr]

Does anyone out there have experience making gruit? i'm planning a brew and would love to hear how other people have gone about it/how they came out.
cheers, murray

 

[neonmeate]

Does anyone out there have experience making gruit? i'm planning a brew and would love to hear how other people have gone about it/how they came out.
cheers, murray

would like to make this but where do you find bogmyrtle and yarrow?

i got some sweet woodruff lately, perhaps i'll try a gruit with it

 

[reviled]

Gruit?

 

[Adamt]

Gruit is beer with hops replaced with other herbs.

 

[neonmeate]

Gruit?

I had one over your way reviled, shid twintytwo in willungton did one.

wouldn't mind trying to make sthg like dupont cerevisia with the nice yeastiness too, dunno where to get all the ingredients
you'd imagine infections would be a worry in a hopless beer too

goulburn brewery used to make a stout with no hops dunno if they still do

 

[white.grant]

Randy Mosher's book radical brewing has a fair bit of info on gruit.

cheers

grant

 

[reviled]

I had one over your way reviled, shid twintytwo in willungton did one.

:lol:

Theres also a spruce beer done by wigram breweries, im pretty sure thats along the same lines... Ive tried it and it was interesting, but I love my hops :icon_drool2:

 

[murrayr]

after a little research on the subject, here's what i'm thinking:
2kg marris otter
2kg aromatic malt
500g smoked malt
250g caramalt
100g chocolate malt

10g wormwood (60 min)
20g yarrow (30 min)
20g marsh rosemary (5 min)
20g bog myrtle (5 min)
50g crushed juniper berries (5min)

then a belgian or german ale yeast..not sure yet

 

[JonnyAnchovy]

I've said this elsewhere, But Alba's Scots Pine Ale is a real treat. I always thought gruit was the domain of cape-wearing anachronist types, but after trying that beer I'm really keen to have a shot myself sometime soon.

 

[Pennywise]

I'm assuming the wormwood is the same stuff that they use in Absynth? I don't think they allow the impotation of it into Aus. I got a few bottles of Absynth sent over in the post from the brother in law when he was in Amsterdam, they would't let him send the real stuff cause it had wormwood oil in it, so he had to buy a couple of bottles that didn't have it to send over.

Just something to consider, although if you can get it thats great

 

[bullya]

after a little research on the subject, here's what i'm thinking:
2kg marris otter
2kg aromatic malt
500g smoked malt
250g caramalt
100g chocolate malt

10g wormwood (60 min)
20g yarrow (30 min)
20g marsh rosemary (5 min)
20g bog myrtle (5 min)
50g crushed juniper berries (5min)

then a belgian or german ale yeast..not sure yet

Try a herb farm/clinic some friends of mine have one and they have all those herbs and then some including hops both fresh and dried. Hope this helps neonmeate.

 

[murrayr]

i have a friend who grows wormwood so that shouldn't be a problem, i also think it was legalised here in recent times...i have definately had absithe with wormwood in it purchased at dans.

 

[murrayr]

you're probably right there bull. some kind of herb shop or farm might be the go for the other herbs. would they have bog myrtle? i'm told this can be hard to find

 

[neonmeate]

after a little research on the subject, here's what i'm thinking:
2kg marris otter
2kg aromatic malt
500g smoked malt
250g caramalt
100g chocolate malt

10g wormwood (60 min)
20g yarrow (30 min)
20g marsh rosemary (5 min)
20g bog myrtle (5 min)
50g crushed juniper berries (5min)

then a belgian or german ale yeast..not sure yet

wow sounds great - that's a lot of aromatic malt though

 

[Pennywise]

i have a friend who grows wormwood so that shouldn't be a problem, i also think it was legalised here in recent times...i have definately had absithe with wormwood in it purchased at dans.

Slightly :icon_offtopic: Maybe it's the whole importing thing then, odd they wouldn't let him bring it in to Aus, was only about 12 months ago. Maybe like hop flowers, can grow em' here but can't import from certain countries?

 

[brettprevans]

im 99% sure wormwood is still illegal. besides you dont actually need it. there's a safe substitute herb that gives the same flavour. Besides wormwood is nasty nurotoxin stuff in it. give it a miss. you can get the flavour from other herbs. oh an there;s differant sorts of wormwood. the one most commonly used in abseinth back in the day is damn hard to find but less toxic varieties (without the weird compound) are available in australia. there's a few threads on wormwood and herbs on AHB. Jovial Monk started one and so did Temple of Seth.

gruit was a term given to the hop replacement misture used when hops were banned back in medievil times. the actual ingredients in gruit changed depending on beer. As previously mentioned Mosher's Redical Brewing rocks this topic.

 

[murrayr]

there is no real evidence that wormwood, even used to excess produces the kind of toxic effects that caused the banning of absinthe, though it is mildly psychotropic, which is probably why it was banned.
and my mistake it is banned in australia, what we get is a knock off aniseed drink.
and gruit was used long before the middle ages as well as during, it only made way for hops when certain countries started banning the use of non-hop herbs in beer - namely germany and britian. hops were sometimes even used in gruit...though late in the boil

 

[notung]

I have betony and alecost flowering nicely in the garden at the moment (the best time to harvest). I also have a fair bit of yarrow from last year dried and stored away. I have been thinking about making up a recipe to try these out, but want to wait until a mate gives me some high% booze from his still so I can make up some tinctures, as described on the link below. Alecost (aka costmary) and betony were used by English brewers for flavour & balancing malts.

Great Canadian website: www.gruitale.com

 

[MHB]

Gruit was something of a catch all name for various concoctions of herbs used to balance the cloying sweetness of ale, I doubt there is any single recipe that can be pointed to and be regarded as being "definitively" the only Gruit.

At about the time Hops were making an appearance in British brewing the church had a monopoly on Gruit production and it was something of a cash cow for them churches (especially when they are the state religion or worse the state) appear reluctant to give up sources of revenue. This is what led to the talk of hops being band, hops were the newcomer, replacing Gruit and the "laws" were an economic responce.

Hops won out in the end, they taste better than Gruit and Hops have very significant preservative properties that Gruit lacks.

Remember that people have been making alcohol from grain since the stone age I think that if Gruit or the stems of Bracken Fern (north British isles Pictish) the bark of willow trees, pine rosin or any of the hundreds of other ingredients known to have been added to ale were better than hops we would still be using them. After all we are in most cases still using the same or descendants of the same grains and yeasts for the same purpose.

Not suggesting that experimentation isn't fun, just don't be surprised if you find that hops are a better choice.
MHB

 

[absinthe]

there is no real evidence that wormwood, even used to excess produces the kind of toxic effects that caused the banning of absinthe, though it is mildly psychotropic, which is probably why it was banned.
and my mistake it is banned in australia, what we get is a knock off aniseed drink.
and gruit was used long before the middle ages as well as during, it only made way for hops when certain countries started banning the use of non-hop herbs in beer - namely germany and britian. hops were sometimes even used in gruit...though late in the boil

absinthe is legal in AUS (so is absinth.. 2 completely different things too) the thujine (the "active" ingredient) need 16+mg to affect a rat and in a ltr of absinthe it cant contain more than 10mg, so you die o drunkenness first lol


you can get dried wormwood and lots of the other herbs you might need from http://herbsupplies.com.au/index.php
(they even have 2 varieties of hops lol $27 a kg for German hops and $40 a kg for organic Croatian would be good if they showed the variety though lol

i also imagine is would make a very nice bittering agent... careful with the juniper berries they are strong