I trust that few of us have enjoyed an ale flavoured with gruit. There are some ales in production which still use it, but it is a rare drink made for connoisseurs, but had you lived in Saxon England, gruit is what you would have got. So what is it?
Gruit [grut, gruyt] is a herbal mixture. There is no set recipe, and it is likely that the brewers used whatever was available to them at different times of year and in a variety of places. We need to be clear, ale was made in private homes, often by the wife of the household, and much depended upon what herbs were available to her. It was also brewed in institutions,such as monasteries, and in the large monasteries there were always herb gardens, so the task of the monastic herbalist was not always to make medicines, but to grow the herbs to flavour the monks' beer. If you look at Strabo's garden, the plot tended by Walafrid Strabo, a mediaeval abbot, there is artemisia, which is a herb widely used for flavouring ale, and Strabo was not growing that for nothing. In some large monasteries there would have been a special garden tended for the purpose of providing flavourants for the ale.
So what was in gruit? It was water flavoured with several or all of the following herbs:sweet gale [myrica or bog myrtle] , artemisia, yarrow [Achillea millefolium] ground ivy [hedera] , horehound [marrubium] and/or heather. The recipe involved soaking the herbs in warm water for several hours, depending upon the herb, until the water was flavoured to the brewer's satisfaction. It was then added to the must, the beer/ale mixture and drunk. Certain herbs have advantages as ale flavourants. Artemisia, the genus that includes wormwood, is the bitterest herb known to humans, and other members of this genus are bitter as well. The Saxons knew artemisia as mugwort. wort being a Saxon term for plant, the wort which goes in your mugs!
Heather is special. Its flowers make a delicate flavouring, but you need a pint of them and they have to be soaked overnight for twenty four hours, so I believe. I can imagine a misbehaving monk being given a penance of collecting a few pints of heather flowers. They make a lovely drink, but picking them is a long and arduous task. Of course the penance might involve going to pick bog myrtle, a muddy and chilly task at times.
Comments
Ginger ale and beer are fermented drinks that use ginger rather than yeast and are therefore non-alcoholic. Ginger beer is an old English drink, but ginger ale was an American invention with a less strong flavour, probably more suitable for mixed drinks than ginger beer was [whiskey and ginger for example.] Whether they can be called true ales or beers is a moot point. However, non-alcoholic ginger beer is a Victorian innovation, as originally ginger beer was brewed with both yeast and ginger, but Victorian temperance campaigners, [all strict Protestants] invented the non-alcoholic kind, leaving out the yeast.
A non-alcoholic ale is just as possible as a non-alcoholic beer [remember that beer includes ale and lager.] I think that the technique for making the non-alcoholic kind is to use the fact that alcoholic evaporates at a temperature lower than water does, so the brewers distill away the alcohol, and you could do this with either ale of beer. There may be other ways to make it, but I do not know them.
Are there nonalcoholic ales? Here we get something called ginger ale, but I am uncertain if it is true ale. It has no alcohol as far as I know.
I suppose that the proportions of the various trace elements in the water in New Brunswick might be subtly different from those in Eastern Ireland. Trace elements are great contributors to taste. I also know that there are different varieties of barley, though whether this contributes to the flavour difference I know not.
Reading the Guinness label right now: "Bottled and brewed in New Brunswick, Canada. Product of Canada". Who knew?
I don't now whether this is still true, but Guinness used to be brewed on tankers that crossed the Atlantic while it was fermenting. But local drinks are often characterized by the use of local water and specific hop varieties, so maybe American guinness is inevitably different from the Irish version of the black stuff.
I am surprised that you drink Guinness Candy as it is reputed to travel badly. This may of course be an Irish myth to sell more of it in Ireland.
My dad always reckoned Guinness tasted better in Ireland. :)
You are not being annoying, I am always glad to read your comments.
At the risk of sounding like an annoying TV commercial, I drink beer once or twice a year but when I do it's Guinness Extra Stout. Interesting collection of flavorings, especially heather.