Amber Gruit

Amber gruit with a selection of freshly-foraged ingredients plus some other odds-and-ends.

Mash Schedule:

-Strike-In @ 137 F (4.4 gal @ 147 F) for 30 min
-Sacch Rest @ 151 F (recirculate w/ boiling) for 60 min
-Sparge @ 168 F to collect 3.5 gal wort
-Recirculate to collect 3 gal for 6.5 gal total


Notes:
-Potentially "dry-hopping" with an as-yet-undetermined amount of honeysuckle by adding it to primary.

6/27/15: Just brewed this one. Perfectly nailed all temps and times as well as post-boil gravity. Our first to feature zero hops and a ton of weird herbs that were foraged by Debbie, one of Pat's Barismo regulars.

7/4/15: Happy Independence Day; to celebrate, we've pulled a sample of this wonderfully weird beer. Fermented down to 1.010 (narrowly missing the 1.008 we wanted, but we'll take it as it's still fairly well-attenuated and we have the "dry-hopping" [aka a tea of honeysuckle and some more elderflower] ready). The nose is biscuity, slightly estery and spicy. The additions of the different herbs are fairly muted, but the beer drinks very well-balanced and surprisingly bitter for having no hops. The mustard and mugwort lend a funky, earthy flavor while the late additions of pineapple flower, though more muted than they seemed initially when the beer went into the fermenter, make the flavor slightly brighter and more floral. Some residual sweetness is notable, but the yeast strain is dry and chalky, with some nutty and woodsy notes in the finish as well. Once this conditions and carbonates, it's going to be nuts. You heard it here first.

7/10/15: Seems that our gruit has a lacto ferm going on. Must have stemmed from careless handling of honeysuckle during "dry hop" addition. We added some more elderflower into the honeysuckle boil but must not have been hot enough to sterilize before we 86'd it back out. Luckily it's absolutely amazing with a slight tartness, and the honeysuckle really comes thru in the finish.