A couple of years back, Red Duck's brewer made one of his regular ventures back in time to create a beer with its origins in Medieval, pre-hop Britain. Canute the Gruit featured homemade nettle juice, deliberately scorched grains and various other unusual ingredients to create a beer that was smokey, sour and odd, but over time developed into something really rather good. He followed it up with Gruiter, described as a "Renaissance" take on the style that lacked the complexity of the former but made up for it with possibly the most lip-puckering intensity of any beer released in Oz last year. Now the superlative trilogy is completed by Gruitest, a "modern gruit ale". If you're not sure what a modern gruit ale is, don't worry, we've no idea. Thankfully brewer Scott is on hand to at least tell us what's gone into it. Namely: "yarrow, wormwood, mugwort, dandelion leaf, sweet dried orange peel, lemon balm, elderflowers, hibiscus flowers and hawthorn berries." If it sounds like something you'd stumble upon in a tent in the Green Fields of Glastonbury circa 1994, it probably is, but with the shrooms replaced by booze. He tells us it "has a wonderful strong malt character, balanced by soft herbal and floral aromatics ... and a slight natural tartness, which occured naturally from the gruit additions." Intriguing...
Published September 17, 2013 2013-09-17 00:00:00
