Gruit

A Continuing Attempt to Unravel History

By Mike Retzlaff

Many years ago, before the common use of hops as an ingredient in the making of beer, gruit was used to preserve and flavor ale.  This also applied to other fermented beverages such as mead, metheglin, braggot, etc.   

Gruit (gruet, grut, gruyt) was more than a mixture of various herbs and spices.  It seems a common belief that the brewer just gathered up wild herbs and spices from glens, meadows, and forest floors to suffice his needs in the brewhouse.  In fact, the various plants that went into a gruit blend came from many varied and far off places.  At the time, some of these imported ingredients eclipsed the price of hops by a factor of 3 or 4 times.  Many of the components of gruit got their start as traditional medicinal concoctions to treat various ailments of the human condition.

It is well documented that in the area of the Netherlands and Northwestern Germany, the collection and supply of these ingredients became an industry unto itself.  Gruit houses gathered the herbs from traders and processed them as a blend for sale to brewers.  Individual recipes don’t seem to have survived but, available records do indicate that the Gruit Houses purchased a number of things:

• Bog Myrtle (sweet gale, Myrica gale)
• Porsch (marsh rosemary, sea-lavender, statice, caspia – latin Limonium)
• Bekeler (Laurel Berry)
• Serpentien (scharpe tonge, scherpentangen, sermentangen, sermontaine, siler montanum – all seem to stem from “Laserpitium Siler”; an herb that grows in the Alps and is commonly called Laserwort or snake herb)
• Resin (it isn’t clear if this was an ingredient or for use in cooperage)
• Juniper Berry
• Anise
• Koemps (mentioned in a gruthaus record in Köln)
• Kerse (cherries in Dutch is kerse or kersen; in German kerze = candles. Ingredient or used for lighting in the workplace?)
• Saxifrage – latin saxum frangere (stone breaker) an herb used for relief of kidney and bladder stones.
• Bayberry – another plant of the Myrica genus.
• Ground Ivy – aka Alehoof, a ground creeper of the mint family.  Glechoma hederacea
• Cascarilla – Croton eluteria, still used to flavor Campari and Vermouth.

In addition, Gruit Houses (German & Dutch) purchased Peat, Malt, and Vezen (?) to combine with their mixtures.  These assembled concoctions were sold to the brewers.  These “other brewing ingredients” were not purchased in sufficient quantities to actually make ale but it is speculated that they were included to make a syrup or gruel for inclusion in the brewing process and possibly to mask the exact formulation of the gruit.

City governments generated revenue through taxes on the gruit.  For some Dutch cities, the taxes on gruit amounted to as much as 23% of the total city revenues so it was an important and substantial industry.

Similar brewing practices existed in other places.

In Wales, the ingredients of gruit consisted of wild sage, saxifrage, betony (Bishop’s wort), wild marjoram, and thyme in various mixtures.

The Medieval English brewer utilized sweet gale, marsh rosemary, millfoil, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, ground ivy, nutmeg, mace, fennel, mugwort (wormwood), guinea pepper, and mint.

The ancient Britons used mugwort (wormwood), bayberry, ground ivy, pine & willow bark, cascarilla bark, broom, extract of aloe, and calocynth (bitter apple).

In 1380, there were about 30,000 residents in London with around 1,000 breweries. Most brewed small quantities as the beverage did not keep well. With the advent of hops, the use of gruit ended over a very short period.  Hopped beer was being brewed in the Low Countries around 1320.  Over the next 100 years, gruit ales had virtually disappeared.

In 1357, the ‘novus modus fermentandi cervisiam’ dictated that this ‘new method of brewing’ required the “new herb” (hops) to be separate from gruit and to be boiled with the wort.  Gruit had not been processed that way as it was added during fermentation or even post fermentation.

This “new hopped beer” was accepted in the army and onboard ships where durability was of key importance.  Even with competition from foreign brewers, it took some time before hopped beer caught on in the British Isles partially because of Royal Decrees made by Henry VI and Henry VIII which forbade the use of hops.

It is interesting to note that the Romans brought hop rhizomes with them when they occupied Britain.  However, the Romans used them as a culinary ingredient.

It is important to remember that the use of gruit isn’t the same as just adding spices to a Belgian White beer.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a recipe to suggest. There is some information that might be helpful in my Adding Spices article.