No Hops? No Problem–Brew a Gruit!

Homebrewers have a distinct advantage over Microbreweries in that they can truly make any beer they want, to include beers that are extremely rare. Since the Hop shortage, my interest in brewing an old world beer called a Gruit has increased. So finally, after brewing for many years, I decided to brew this strange beer.

One of the harder parts about this beer was finding the ingredients. In the old way of brewing it, ingredients were picked locally. Over time, there became some commonly used ones: Mugwort, Yarrow, Marsh Rosemary (or Wild Rosemary), and Sweet Gale. I was able to get Mugwort (left) and yarrow(right) from the natural food store, Dayspring in Auburn. John helped me out with the Sweet Gale, and I was out of luck with the Wild Rosemary, so I just omitted it.

I made a tea with the ingredients to get an idea what each one tasted like, and was quite surprised. The Yarrow has some great bittering qualities, and was very difficult to drink (ever try to taste hop pellets?). Mugwort had an interesting potpourri/Christmas spice kind of flavor. Sweet gale tasted sweet, and will make for a great flavoring hop.
So my recipe I made up (partly a pantry challenge–I was using up some old grain) is this:

5.59 lb German Pale Malt
2 lb CaraMunich 70L
1 lb CaraPils
.25 lbs Carafa I (Dehusked)
.5 lb Light Brown Sugar

Yeast: Wyeast Weihenstephan (2L Yeast starter made from my Dunkelweizen)

Spices:
1 oz Yarrow @ 60 minutes
1 oz Mugwort @ 60 minutes
1 oz Sweet Gale @ 15 minutes

I mashed for 1 hour at 150 degrees, and boiled it for 75 minutes

I lost a lot of water in this boil (it was cold so I had a longer heat up time and I was using my full size sanke keg boil pot). My runoff was just shy of 7 gallons, and I ended up with just over 4 gallons of wort!

OG was 1.048.

I plan to follow up with some tasting notes of this strange beer!

Brewed: 19 Jan 2008.

Filed under: Blogroll, Brew Log