Gruit
Historic Beer of Choice in the Modern Age

Sean Sweeney, Brewer

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Gruit Ale - Beer Sans Hops

This will be a short article describing my experience brewing the historic beer style called Gruit Ale. I will not go into detail about the origins of gruit. If you are interested, I would suggest the excellent book entitled Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers by Stephen Harrod Buhner. The September/October 2000 issue of Zymurgy also has a reasonably good article about gruit.

Suffice it to say that gruit is what beer was before hops. Prior to the seventeenth century, most ales were made with a combination of herbs for aroma, flavor and bitterness instead of hops. Although many different herbs were used in the historic brewing of gruit, there are three that were most commonly used and have come to be known as the centerpiece around which a gruit recipe is based. These are Sweet Gale, also called Bog Myrtle (Myrica gale), Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) and Wild or Marsh Rosemary (Ledum palustre). Some other brewing herbs and spices that were used are juniper berries, ginger, caraway seed, anise, nutmeg, cinnamon, wormwood, sage, broom, henbane, mandrake, darnel, saffron and many others. I used another traditional brewing herb, Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris), for added authenticity. Almost every brewer or brewster in ancient times had his or her own closely guarded secret recipe for gruit.

I based my first attempt to brew a gruit ale around an extract recipe using a spray dried malt extract called Big Red. It is a 120L dark caramel extract. I believe that historic versions of gruit most probably were dark in character due to the brewing techniques of the day. I also used a quantity of light and dark brown sugar and invert candy sugar, as well as honey. I used Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen yeast. I thought the weizen character might blend well with the contribution of the herbs. Here are the specifics of my recipe:

Gruit Ale (5 gallon batch)

Malts/Sugars
3 lbs. Dark caramel dry malt extract
0.5 lb. Light brown sugar
0.5 lb. Dark brown sugar
0.5 lb. Homemade invert candy sugar (medium color)
1 lb. Honey

Yeast
Wyeast 3068 Weihenstephan Weizen

Hops
No hops, of course, but here are the herb additions in a 75 minute boil:
1 oz. Dried Mugwort at 60 minutes
1 oz. Dried Yarrow at 60 minutes
2 g. Dried Sweet Gale at 10 minutes
0.2 oz. Dried Marsh Rosemary at 10 minutes

Also added was 1 pound malto-dextrin at 10 minutes for added body/mouthfeel.

OG: 1.050 (12.33°P)
FG: 1.008 (2.06°P)
6.15% abv

Added 4.5ml 'Richie' heading agent at bottling. This was used to counteract the possible head killing oils from the herbs.  Bottle conditioned with 5oz. corn sugar for priming.

As of this writing, my gruit ale is still carbonating, but I can say that it is a tasty and unusual brew. It will probably benefit from an extended maturation time, as do many highly spiced or herbed beers. I will be bringing it to this month's St. Louis Brews homebrewing club meeting (October 2000) for evaluation. If you have questions about my gruit ale, email me at [email protected].

Conclusion
Good news on the gruit front.  My gruit ale was selected to represent our brewclub at the upcoming AHA club-only historical beer competition.  Although this time around there were not many historical style beers competing against my gruit at the meeting, I am always honored to be chosen.  I can only hope that the judges at the next round will enjoy my creation as much as my club did.  The competition isn't until the first week in December, and from past experience I probably won't get the judge's scoresheets back for a month or more.  Check back toward the end of December if you are interested in what they have to say.

As far as the impressions of those that have tasted my gruit ale so far, overwhelmingly the comments are positive.  As you can imagine, this is a rather unusual beer.  The aroma is not overpowering.  Sweet and roasty, with a bit of herb pungency.  The initial taste sensation is of a rich, darkly roasted maltiness with a moderate amount of herb bitterness, but not at all objectionable.  This was a great relief to me, as I was basically winging the quantities of herbs used.  Due to the very low terminal gravity, the beer has almost no head retention and low viscosity, which gives the carbonation a rather 'soda-pop' fizziness.  Both of these factors will be corrected in my next batch when I use an all grain recipe.  The use of extract in this first recipe was more convenience than anything.  I am thinking along the lines of a dark wheat beer for the base of my next gruit.  All in all, I think this was a very promising start.  With 6 months or more of aging, I think this batch will be quite drinkable for such an odd concoction.

Breaking News
December 10, 2000

As more of a lark than anything, I entered this gruit into my homebrew club's annual competition, The Happy Holiday Homebrew Competition.  It was entered in the Specialty/Experimental/Historical category.  lo and behold, it comes up with First Place!  In a piece of blatant self promotion, here's the medal...

My first attempt at Gruit Ale wins a Gold Medal

I will try to get the judge's scoresheets up here for your perusal in the near future.  It scored 42 points overall out of 50.  This is a really good score considering the unusual nature of this beer.  It beat out 8 other entries I believe, many of which were far more mainstream.  This win really encourages me to go ahead with future Gruit plans and make it even better than the first go.

Images of the herbs used

Marsh Rosemary
A bit too much extraneous woody material for my liking, but considering its rarity
I probably would have accepted 50% mouse droppings!

Mugwort
Green, leafy material.  That just about covers it.  Nondescript mild weedy aroma,
but the bittering qualities from it seem to be excellent.  Very clean.

Yarrow
A fernlike plant, seen here chopped in smaller sections.  This is mostly the leaf material,
but the flowering tops are more desirable if you can get them in quantity.

Sweet Gale
I purchased a 2 gram packet of Sweet Gale from a local homebrew store.  It is sold under the Brewer's Garden name.

Resources

Want to brew your own gruit ale?  First of all...go for it!  This noble, historic style of beer has been relegated to the back shelf for far too long.  Do yourself and your culture a favor and brew one today!  Here are some places to start on your search for the ingredients for gruit ale.

Marsh or Wild Rosemary (Ledum palustre)
Let's start with the one I found most difficult.  After many fruitless hours of searching the internet for a source of this key herb, I finally found a mention of someone who found a source.

Wildweeds - Check out their website.  Lots of great herbs to be had there.  If you do purchase herbs for brewing, please let them know how much you appreciate them making it available to the brewing community.

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
I grew this one myself.  A very prolific plant and easy to cultivate.  Wildweeds sells this herb too, described as "flower/herb" and "cut/sifted, wildcrafted".  If this is anything like their Marsh Rosemary, it is of excellent quality and would work perfect for brewing.  I do not, however, have personal experience with their yarrow product.

Richters - Although I have never ordered from them, Richters has an excellent reputation for offering fine herbal products.  They carry the correct variety of yarrow in seeds, plants and dried herb and flowers.  Awesome catalog.  Check it out.

Sweet Gale a.k.a Bog Myrtle (Myrica gale)
I could not find a source of seeds or plants to grow my own.  Luckily, homebrewers already have a source.  It is sold in finer homebrew supply stores under the Brewer's Garden label.  Comes in 2 gram packets.  When used by itself in a lightly flavored beer, this may be enough.  However, for use in a more strongly flavored gruit, I don't think 2g. really held its own.  But for $1 a packet...buy several.

Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris)
Another homegrown herb.  This plant grows like the weed it is.  Not one of the three key ingredients necessary for brewing gruit ale, but I am sure it ended up in many a historic gruit recipe nonetheless.  Brewer's Garden also carries this herb, but I have never seen it available with their other offerings.  If they don't have it, ask your local brewstore if they can order it for you, or try one of the many fine mail order homebrew supply shops online.  Sold in 1 ounce bags.

Redwood City Seed Company -  One of my favorite rare and unusual seed companies.  They sell mugwort seeds.  I can personally attest to their quality and viability.  You will only need to plant once.  It is perennial and will spread everywhere if you let it.

UPDATE (November 22, 2000)
From the looks of things, Wildweeds is a one stop shop for all your gruit needs.  Is seems that they not only sell the wild rosemary that I got and the yarrow I knew about, but they also carry sweet gale and mugwort as well.  See the section for Wild Rosemary above for contact info.  Now, go gruit!

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