Gruit? Do it! This Friday Smokehouse Brewing will tap this seldom-seen beer style at their Grandview area brewpub.
Gruit is a beer style that uses herbs and botanicals in place of hops. Smokehouse’s gruit, named Maeve (pronounced Mave), is brewed with hawthorn, elderberries and dandelion roots and clocks in at 7.2% ABV.
“To experience a gruit is to experience an example of what beer was before hops started being used in beer,” Kolada said. “This is what beer was from the dawn of civilization up to the 13th century.”
According to Beer Scene Magazine, the first recorded history of hops in brewing was in 822 AD in France. Germany didn’t get into the hop game until about 300 years later, and even then gruit ales persisted alongside hopped brews until the mid 19th century when hops overtook gruit as the main preserving and bittering agent in beer worldwide.
The beer’s name, Maeve, is a derivative of Medb, the Celtic goddess of Fertility.
full disclosure: Smokehouse Brewing is a client
One Comment on "Smokehouse tapping gruit this Friday"
Thanks for the post! We are excited to bring another first to CBus. We’ve also got Centennial IPA infused with tangerines in the firkin that day. Let’s party like it’s 1699!