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In the beer world today, we like to talk about the four primary ingredients used to make beer — malt, hops, water and yeast. But it hasn’t always been that way.
Beer has been around almost as long as civilization; in fact, some archaeologists say evidence suggests that beer is the reason hunter-gatherers began settling down in prehistoric Neolithic communities as long ago as 12,000 BCE. But if you tried some of that beer, you would hardly recognize it. While it still contained fermented barley, hops were nowhere to be seen. In fact, hops have been a key ingredient in beer for a fraction of beer’s long history.
Before hops became that core fourth ingredient, brewers flavored beer with whatever plants and herbs they could find locally. The resulting brews, called gruit ales, originated in the Netherlands, Belgium and parts of western Germany in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. Many communities had proprietary herb mixes for brewing that churches or rulers controlled and taxed. These beverages offer a glimpse into medieval Europe and a chance to taste history.
With a few limited exceptions and experimentation, most beer from antiquity on was made with a grain, like barley or wheat, water and yeast (although it took centuries for yeast to be really understood as the catalyst in fermentation). If you’ve ever tried a fermented barley drink, it’s very, very sweet. It tastes like a bowl of grainy cereal, but served with lightly sour, runny bread dough instead of milk. It’s drinkable, but not very enjoyable unless you add something else. Over the millennia, many things have been added to beer, including fruits, dates, honey and spices.
Evidence suggests hops were used in brewing sporadically. Hops plants are believed to have originated both in the Middle East and Europe. The earliest documented cultivation of hops in Germany was around 736 CE, but the grain didn’t catch on broadly as a beer ingredient until much later.
Beer brewed with hops lasted longer, allowing it to be shipped and sold further from the brewery, giving brewers a decided advantage if they were trying to build a business. But it was also harder to work with, requiring a long boiling time and precision in the brewing process to get it right. Unhopped beer was easier to make and more palatable than bitter hopped beer, which was more of an acquired taste.
By the 12th and 13th centuries, hopped beer became more common, and by the 15th century, it was widespread throughout Europe. England, however, took until the 16th century to broadly adopt hops. Today, you can still find some unhopped ales there, and modern brewers, always on the lookout for something different to offer, have begun to rediscover gruits.
So what is a modern gruit? The word itself is pronounced either “groo-it” or simply “groot,” like the sentient tree-like Marvel character from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” and is a beer that’s flavored, not with hops, but with a mixture of herbs, spices and other plants that add additional flavors to balance the sweet malt. Like the character Groot, who only says “I Am Groot” to convey every message, gruits are similar insofar as while any one of them is a gruit, no two of them are alike, because the flavors available to combine are always changing with the seasons.
Some common ingredients used in place of hops include bog myrtle (or sweet gale), wild rosemary and yarrow. But there are many others, such as tree bark, caraway, cinnamon, elderberries, ginger, ground ivy, heather, horehound, juniper, laurel berries, mugwort, nutmeg, pine, spruce, seaweed and more. While less common, some gruits have used bergamot, chamomile, flowers, lavender, sage, star anise, sweet woodruff (baby’s breath) and thyme — and that’s hardly an exhaustive list.
Almost nothing is off the table: If it can be found growing in the area and might add some character or flavor to the concoction, it can flavor a gruit. Since no two are alike, it’s difficult to say what a given gruit might taste like. But if done well, the botanical elements will work in concert to yield a delicious herbal beer-like beverage.
Finding a contemporary fresh gruit can be difficult, but it is worth the effort. Several Bay Area breweries have made and continue to make one from time to time. The problem is that they’re not bestsellers, and they don’t have a long shelf life. I have had gruits brewed by Alameda Brewing, the Fox Tale Fermentation Project, Mad Fritz Brewing, Moonlight Brewing, and Woods Beer Co., so those are good places to start. But many brewpubs like to experiment with seasonal and one-off beers, so keep your eyes on their menus, and hopefully, you’ll find one.
Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com.
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