Hopless beer

Hello all. I've been reading a bit about hopless beers and really want to try it out. I plan on playing around with a few 1 gal batches to see what works for me. The first I have planed to use only grapefruit peels ( pith and all) and pine needles. Also perhaps a few small pine twigs???( for bittering without as much pine flavour??) I was just wondering if anyone has done this before and how it turned out/ would I be better off useing something eles for bittering?

Unhoped ales are sometimes called Gruit. http://www.gruitale.com/intro_en.htm Try this. Also type in Gruit in the search bar and some threads pop up as well. Good luck. I've been wanting to make a gruit for a bit now just have to find some yarrow and sweet gale.

Another reference for you: Stephen Harrod Buhner's 'Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.'

Ground ivy, a.k.a. creeping charlie, makes one of the most refreshing summer beers I've ever had. No other herbs, just the ground ivy, in the proportions the Buhner recommends.

Gruit was the way before hops came to play and there are many ways of doing it, this is partially why corriander as a flavor addition is popular as it used to be an ingredient common to gruits.

You can also use spruce tips (Alaskan has a good example of this).

The one thing you are going to notice is that you will end up with a much sweeter beer than it's hopped counterpart, not a bad thing overall but to the tastebud and mind that is expecting certain things from beer or ale it may take a little to get used to.

I made a beer one,s with only pine twigs for bittering. it works, but next time i ad some bitteringhops and use the pine twigs only for aroma. use sprousse twigs, they are more pleasant

You could also consider Dandelion root in the boil. That's been used to add bitterness in the past too.

Look into some of the Scottish styles, some use minimal hops and/or heather in place of hops.

Years ago a news story came out stating that a beer recipe was found in hieroglyphs over in Egypt, and was 2500 yrs old. Would this be a gruit beer?

Also, when it was brewed they had a huge media event and it was being sold at $75 per bottle! Wow.

Thanks a lot for the info and reading material I'm quite exited to try this and definitely hold no expectations as far as taste goes.

$75 a bottle that's crazy, I wonder has this recipe Been published anywhere?

I just made a one gallon test batch using nothing but half an ounce of pine needles from a spruce for bittering @ 60min. It's still bottle conditioning but an early taste was not bad, but also not too pleasant.

The pine flavor REALLY carried over, so be prepared for that. It provides sufficient bittering, but also a lot of flavor. I'd say shoot for 0.25 or 0.125 ounce in a one gallon batch @ 60min.

The flavor might smooth out with age. I'm hoping it does, because the underlying beer is good.

I also wouldn't use any twigs at all. Those have a gross resiny/sappy taste. Stick with the needles. They have more of an earthy pine taste.

I also plan to try another test batch with only bright green new growth in the spring if I get a chance.

An over powering spruce or pine taste is my biggest concern for sure that's we're I was hoping to replace some with the grapefruit peel. I plan on a 60 min needle boil but am not to sure how long to boil the peel to get some bitterness but still hold some citrus flavour?

Sorry my previous post was edited to say Spruce Tips not Cedar tips...early morning brewing without coffee clouded my brain

chase6 said:

An over powering spruce or pine taste is my biggest concern for sure that's we're I was hoping to replace some with the grapefruit peel. I plan on a 60 min needle boil but am not to sure how long to boil the peel to get some bitterness but still hold some citrus flavour?

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To be honest the only example I have tasted was the Alaskan offering and it was not "Sprucey" at all, in fact it came off as a bit to the sweet side compared to what I am used to. I am not sure how to calculate quantity though which would be my only concern using them,

Citrus peel (Orange, Grapefruit etc.) when put in at last 10-15 of boil does hold through to finished product, especially grapefruit and other strong flavored citrus fruits so you could use that along with the spruce to tone down the sweetness as much or as little as you desire but it will take some playing to get it dialed in a bit.

catdaddy66 said:

Years ago a news story came out stating that a beer recipe was found in hieroglyphs over in Egypt, and was 2500 yrs old. Would this be a gruit beer?

Also, when it was brewed they had a huge media event and it was being sold at $75 per bottle! Wow.

Click to expand...

Something similar yes. Gruit itself was a mixture of herbs like Yarrow, mugwort, ivy, Heather and other stuff.

Hops were not made the defacto bittering agent until around the 1300 or 1400's, when the Church and nobility started levying taxes on Gruit. Everyone started using hops, liked the taste better, found the beer didn't spoil as quickly and now beer=hops.

ioo said:

Something similar yes. Gruit itself was a mixture of herbs like Yarrow, mugwort, ivy, Heather and other stuff.

Hops were not made the defacto bittering agent until around the 1300 or 1400's, when the Church and nobility started levying taxes on Gruit. Everyone started using hops, liked the taste better, found the beer didn't spoil as quickly and now beer=hops.

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Kind of but not exactly...

Gruit had been taxed for some time, but with the advent of hops it actually was a choice of the brewers to hold off as the people buying it didn't appreciate the bitter flavor hops imparted. So some made batches with hops but mainly stuck to gruit for quite some time.

Ale retained gruit for quite a while as the preservative of choice, beer on the other hand always contained hops.

*edit* Once I finish my current sparge I will add a bit more detail to clarify

I just made a Game of Thrones inspired gruit the other day based off a medieval recipe. I just bottled it Saturday, so it isn't ready yet, but my first impressions of my hydro reading were good. It had a sour taste to it, which may have been from leaving it uncovered outside overnight, but I boiled it again the next day. I used melted snow, and no hops or other vegetation in the boil, but I did filter the grain through pine boughs. If it turns out, I can post the recipe.

Here is a quote directly from "For the Love of Hops" by Stan Hieronymus (currently reading it)

Although the advantages of using hops became clear, it would take centuries rather than decades for hopped beers to become dominant. In Beer in the Middle Ages and Renaisannce, Richard Unger described how brewers in north German towns first needed time to master making hopped beers before they began to export them, and the pattern was then repeated by brewers in other regions. Additionally, drinkers had to acquire a taste for a drink that was more bitter than what they were used to.

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So the discovery and use of hops took some time to take hold even though the tax by the church on gruit was in place.

These may be a bit sensationalized, but here are a couple interesting articles:

• A Short Treatise on Homebrewing & the Meaning of Gruit
• The Fall of Gruit and the Rise of Brewer's Droop

The first site also has several recipes if you don't want to get the book mentioned earlier. It (the book) certainly takes a much more cavalier approach to brewing than most of us here would care to take, but some of the recipes look interesting. Be warned, some of the recipes are included for historical value, but some of the ingredients that are called for are known today to be harmful.

(Edit: Clarified an antecedent.)

You can also add alpha extract to bitter, it's technically not considered hops.

Haha not technically I spose but not quite what I'm going for