October 2015 Gruit

I will now touch on a sensitive subject that is open to much debate and will most likely never been completely solved. I have mentioned earlier about the difference between gruit and hops so I thought it would only be proper to dedicate this months article to the topic of gruit.

Background
Before the use of hops, brewers used something called gruit, grut, gryt and other variants of the same word. This was/is an additive to the brew to make it taste better and also last longer before hops made a big breakthrough. In some instances it was considered to have almost magical powers and was adding healing to the brew, in others it was just to add color to it which is mentioned in an act from the town Huy where the term pigmentum is used for gruit (the act is dated to 1068). One definition that explains it quite well is: a combination of vegetable of different kinds used as an additive in brewing. For simplicity I will use the term gruit as it's the most common in ancient records.

One of the first mentions of it was in the Latin form, materium cerevisiae, and that was by Emperor Otto II when he mentioned a transfer for gruit rights to the church at Liége.

What was it then?
Gruit was a combination of herbs, among them laurel leaves, wild rosemary and most noticeably bog myrtle or sweet gale (myrice gale). The leaves of myrica gale was picked, dried and then crushed before it was used as an additive. I have tried this in brews and it gives a rather sweet, grassy taste to it. If boiled long enough it does give a quite bitter taste not completely different from hops although the aromatic qualities are quite different and substituting hops with this herb will give something completely different.

What was the role in society
As mentioned in earlier articles, the gruit rights, or the more Germanic version "gruitrrecht" which is more common in the historical records, was a source of power. Thinking on how much beer/ale that was drunk during medieval times you quite easily realize how much gruit was used by the brewers and thus placing a tax on the gruit was something people in power was quick to do. This was such a large matter of economy, and economy being a source of power, the gruitrecht was a bargaining chip. Selling the gruitrecht in order to secure a position was not uncommon, although sometimes it came with a condition, like that a third of the money was to be used to secure the harbors etc. The tax itself was called gruitgeld.

Why change to using hops
One of the simplest explanations is that hops makes the brew last longer. Doing some practical, although not really scientific tests, I would say that a rather strong ale without hops lasts a few months while a beer with hops last many times longer when both being of equal strength. It had a different taste, authorities was against the move to use hops instead of gruit as they started to lose the monopoly and a great source of income. Although hoppengeld came to replace the gruitgeld as a way to bring in taxes from the people. But change was inevitable as the brewers started to figure out that the shelf life of their brews increased enough to make a real impact. Bringing ale on board a ship worked for a little while but as the trips was quite long the brew got spoiled before the end of the trip but as with beer made with hops lasted the entire trip it was more desirable to make. In the beginning it was considered a lower form of drink but after some time it caught on, as we know so well today as we most likely wouldn't like a beer brewed without hops.