Brooklyn Brew Shop's Dandelion Gruit

[TasunkaWitko]

The next beer that I will be brewing is a Dandelion Gruit, from Brooklyn Brew Shop.



As with all of my "Tips and Advice" threads, this will be a running account of the experience and the things that I learn during the process.

As usual, I'll start with the particulars:

Informational link:

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/beer-mak...lion-gruit-mix

Instructions:

http://brooklynbrewshop.com/directio...structions.pdf

Gruit is an ancient style of beer that was in wide use before hops became popular. In gruits, herbs, spices and other flavourings were used as bittering agents to balance the malts. You can read more about gruit here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruit

With this gruit, dandelion leaves fill the role of bittering agent, along with lemon peel and black peppercorns. I had toyed with the idea of using long pepper or grains of paradise in place of the peppercorns - and even ordered some; however, they appear to have disappeared, which is not unusual in my house, where the kids are always into my stuff. If I find them, I will use them; if not, then maybe next time.

I happen to have the recipe for this one; if anybody is interested in trying it, please shoot me a PM. I am reluctant to post it on the open forum as it is not "my" recipe.

Brew Day is planned for tonight or tomorrow night, which means that I will be lucky to get it done this weekend. I will of course post notes, observations and lessons learned as they happen.

[jwbtulsa]

Ha ha!
"I am gruit".
Please refer to Guardians of the Galaxy.... Character is actually spelled groot but this is funnier. After a few pints you will probably sound like him!!👍

[PitRow]

Sounds really interesting. I'll be following for sure

[Bearcarver]

Should be Interesting Ron!!

When I was young, my Uncle used to make Dandelion Wine & Wineberry Wine.

I liked the Wineberry Wine, but I hated the Dandelion Wine----TOO BITTER !!

However a Dandelion leaf salad with Hot Bacon Dressing is a famous PA Dutch treat, and I'm not crazy about that either. I would sooner put my Hot Bacon Dressing on a Lettuce & Tomato Salad.
The White Milk in the Dandelion Leaves is very Bitter!!


Bear

[GimmeSomeBeef]

Will you go with spontaneous fermentation or with
a standart yeast?

[TasunkaWitko]

Hey, guys - thanks for the replies so far.

I decided to put this one on a short hold while I go ahead and order the long pepper and grains of paradise, which should really make this interesting. I also have some mugwort and elderflowers that I might add as well. Once the stuff gets here, I'll see what happens.

[TasunkaWitko]

Will you go with spontaneous fermentation or with
a standart yeast?

I thought about trying spontaneous fermentation with this, but my experience and knowledge are not quite there yet ~ also, my house is FULL of cats, and who knows what might result!

One of these days, though, I will be giving it a try - some interesting concepts there!

[Richtee]

also, my house is FULL of cats, and who knows what might result!

Hehehe...

[GimmeSomeBeef]

I thought about trying spontaneous fermentation with this, but my experience and knowledge are not quite there yet ~ also, my house is FULL of cats, and who knows what might result!

One of these days, though, I will be giving it a try - some interesting concepts there!

Got you. For me its pretty much the same concerns you have. Thought about a forced spontaneous (cheating) fermentation, through a yeast dough next to the beer. Some friends of mine claimed to have had good results that way.
But I still don't see if there is any real advantage to it.

[curious aardvark]

good luck.
food programs keep telling me that you can use dandelion leaves in salads.
So the other day I ate one as an experiment.

They taste horrible.
Not sure I'd want dandelion flavoured beer.

But good luck :-)

[TasunkaWitko]

Thanks, guys - we'll see how it goes. BrewDay will probably be this weekend.

Alex - I'm with you regarding the taste of dandelion leaves. It's funny, because dandelion wine is supposed to be some very good stuff. In this case, the purpose here with the dandelions leaves isn't to flavor the beer (thank goodness!), it is only to provide bitterness in lieu of the hops. I'm interested in seeing how it turns out.

I did order some long pepper and grains of paradise. I should be receiving them soon, and am looking forward to seeing how they are. The Dandelion Gruit calls for about a tablespoon (maybe a little more) of black peppercorns. I am thinking of substituting with half grains of paradise and half long pepper, which looks to have an interesting profile. Based on what little I know, both spices would fit in well with the gruit and be relevant to the time period in which gruits had their heyday.

I also have mugwort and elderflowers available to me - would anyone have any thoughts about adding a small amount of either of those, as well? I am unsure as to what they would do to the flavor profile, but they would also be relevant to that time period. Any guidance or suggestions would be appreciated.

More as it happens, etc. &c.

[curious aardvark]

hops are actually used becasue they are extremely high in antioxidants and that makes the beer keep longer.
How people who had no idea about antioxadants discovered that hops make beer last longer is anyone's guess.

The bitterness is just an unfortunate side effect that people learned to live with and now think it was the original purpose of hops.

I don't like bitter tasting things, so real beer has never been my thing.

Apparently about 50% of the population can't actually taste bitter anyway. Like 50% can't smell the sulphides from asparagus in urine.

I can taste bitter and smell asparagus pee - lucky me lol

[TasunkaWitko]

It sounds like you hit the sensory jackpot!

[curious aardvark]

lol something like that.

Just means that I'm less likely to be poisoned by eating strange things.
Part of our built in survival index and proves that I'm more caveman than modern man as well I suppose :-)

Bitterness is of interest to those who study evolution, as well as various health researchers[20][28] since a large number of natural bitter compounds are known to be toxic. The ability to detect bitter-tasting, toxic compounds at low thresholds is considered to provide an important protective function.[20][28][29] Plant leaves often contain toxic compounds, yet even amongst leaf-eating primates, there is a tendency to prefer immature leaves, which tend to be higher in protein and lower in fiber and poisons than mature leaves.[30] Amongst humans, various food processing techniques are used worldwide to detoxify otherwise inedible foods and make them palatable.[31] Furthermore, the use of fire, changes in diet, and avoidance of toxins has led to neutral evolution in human bitter sensitivity. This has allowed several loss of function mutations that has led to a reduced sensory capacity towards bitterness in humans when compared to other species.[32]

[TasunkaWitko]

Today was BrewDay, and I think we've got something interesting here, in a good way.

I made this from a pre-packaged mix, but I also have the recipe for this gruit from Brooklyn Brewshop's book, MAKE SOME BEER. The closest homebrew supply store is 250 miles away, so it's easier for me to just to get the mixes sometimes, rather than trying to assemble the ingredients myself. I highly recommend this book, along with their first book, BEER BREWING BOOK. Both books have dozens of creative and interesting recipes, each written for 1 or 5 gallons.

If anyone would like to try this recipe, shoot me a PM or an email, and I can send it over (it's in pdf format). With dandelions in full swing, now's the time!

It started out as a pretty standard brew. The mash went well for the most part with only a little bit of trouble holding temperatures in the ideal range. I was above my range for a couple of minutes, but hopefully this did not adversely affect the beer too much. My past experience tells me that everything will be fine, as far as that goes.

Interesting note - these grains (and the wort they produced) seemed to have a bit of lemony quality to them, without any additives. Looking at the grains in the recipe (Belgian Pilsner and White Wheat), I'm not sure why, but it is quite pleasant.

The boil is where things went way out of the box. Gruits balance the sweet malts with herbs and spices rather than hops, and Medieval monks were quite creative in their variations.

The original recipe calls simply for dandelion leaves, black peppercorns and lemon peel, but I had a hard time simply leaving it at that, and decided to add a few other additions that would have been available to abbey breweries. I looked through my inventory and found all kinds of things. One thing I was missing was whole cloves, but there were quite a few other interesting alternatives, and I put together what I hope turns out to be a good blend.

I did some searching on the Internet, gathered some ideas, and converted some usages from 5 gallons down to 1 gallon. Wanting to take a rather conservative approach to my radical addition of stuff, I smelled/tasted the herbs and spices and decided to go with these amounts for this first brew:

For the 60-minute boil:

*7 dandelion leaves (beginning of boil)
1 cinnamon stick (beginning of boil)

*Black peppercorns - 5g (45 minutes left in boil)
Long pepper - 5g (45 minutes left in boil)

*1 lemon peel
Grains of paradise - 0.4g (10 minutes left in boil)
Coriander seed - 1g (10 minutes left in boil)
Allspice berries - 1g (10 minutes left in boil)

Mugwort - 5g (5 minutes left in boil)
Elderflowers - 5g (5 minutes left in boil)

*Called for in original recipe (twice as many black peppercorns used in original recipe)

I did take a few photos with this brew. I apologise for the cell phone pictures, but we haven't gotten a new camera yet.

Here are the dandelion leaves, lemon and black peppercorns (I cut the amount of peppercorns in half in order to use the long pepper:



Here is the cinnamon stick along with the lemon peel:



The dandelion leaves and cinnamon stick were added at the beginning of the boil. The lemon peel was added with 10 minutes left in the boil.

Here are half the black peppercorns with an equal amount of long pepper:



These were added 15 minutes into the boil.

Here are the grains of paradise, coriander seed and allspice berries:



I added them, along with the lemon peel, with 10 minutes left in the boil.

Finally, here are the mugwort and the elderflowers:



These were added with 5 minutes left in the boil.

The boil went well enough; I was a a couple of minutes late with one addition, but extended the boil time by the same amount to compensate. Once again, no big deal in the over-all scheme of things.

Once the boil was finished, I chilled the wort in an ice bath, transferred it to my fermenter and pitched my yeast. This Medieval concoction is now tucked safely away in my closet, there to begin it's fermentation in the neighbourhood of 68 degrees.

I snatched a wee sample of the wort, and it is interesting for sure. There's almost no bitterness, but there is a little, and the spices seem to come through very well. Time will tell, once fermentation is complete and the gruit has been bottled, but I think this might turn out to be very interesting, and tasty.

More as it happens, etc. &c....