Backyard Gruit: Alehoof and Yarrow

Why brew a light, refreshing “lawnmower” ale to be enjoyed after yard work when you can brew a batch flavored with lawnmower clippings? Well not literally, but this is a batch of sour beer flavored with ingredients foraged from what would otherwise be clipped. A beer that captures the aroma of summertime in my backyard!

In April, when I posted a photo of my North-Eastern Australian IPA sitting on my lawn, Caleb Levar (I tried to send him bottle dregs to culture in 2011) pointed out that the ground cover with vibrant purples flowers was a brewing herb:

use the Creeping Charlie in that picture!

— Caleb Levar (@celevar1) April 3, 2017

I met Carlos, my brewing partner for the day, back in February when Blane invited us to brew (with juniper, smoke, and kveik). Carlos is an enthusiastic forager, and talked about a variety of exciting projects like malting his own quinoa for a 100% quinoa beer! We’d been looking for an excuse to brew together again since, so this was perfect!

I hadn’t heard of ground ivy beer previously, but in addition to being an invasive species, it is a historic English/saxon brewing herb (often called alehoof). Brewing herbs growing wild is a great argument for lawn as a meadow in addition to avoiding the use of fertilizer and herbicide! Crushed, alehoof smells a bit like parsley crossed with arugula, green but not grassy, a little peppery. That flavor is rich in terpenes, phenols, and vitamin C. The list of volatiles in this study for Glechoma hederacea is so long that it is difficult to pick out what compounds are responsible for it's flavor. However, it contains many of the terpenes in hops including important aroma molecules: humulene, caryophyllene, linalool, and traces of myrcene and geraniol.

When I visited my parents a couple months later, my father showed off the yarrow in his garden on Cape Cod (a few feet from where my mead is buried). Another classic brewing herb! I had read that yarrow loses its most interesting aromatics during drying, so this was a rare opportunity to try it fresh. β-pinene, linalool, and β-caryophyllene are found in yarrow and hops, so another chance of a beer with flavors reminiscent of a wet hopped ale? I actually have a keg on wine-barrel solera still sitting in my basement with fresh yarrow from Spruce on Tap that I purchased when I brewed my India Pale Gruit... I should probably pull a sample.

For the alehoof  usage-rate I referenced Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers (3 oz dried/12 quarts per roughly three gallons), and Growler Magazine (6–8 quarts per 5 gallons). Both sounded like a lot of an herb I'd never tasted in a beer, so I went easy with two quarts in 11 gallons at the start of the boil. We split the yarrow adding the leaves with the alehoof, and the flower heads and stems in the whirlpool treating it like aroma hops. Again though, 2 oz in 11 gallons is less than most recipes I could find.

Carlos brought a bag of pink salt from Maras, an Incan salt production facility still in use today. A stream of subterranean brine in diverted into shallow pools and allowed to evaporate. The light reddish color comes from traces of iron. Iron isn't a positive beer additive, but using ancient salt is romantic with traditional herbs. Salt is a classic part of gose, and can help meld bitterness and acidity (as in a salad).

We planned to split the batch, but Carlos had a flight to Peru a week after brewing to cover between head brewers at a small brewery. I revived Right Proper's House Lacto culture (which did good work in my lone qunioa beer) and pitched the other half with GigaYeast's Sour Cherry Funk. I didn't have a plan for that pack, so this seemed like a good test. It is still in the fermentor, this tasting is of the Right Proper half.

Backyard Gruit-Gose

Smell – Slight spicy and herbaceous aroma. There are some green notes that with the knowledge of what is in there reminds me of mowing. Luckily it doesn’t remind me of boiled greens. Not an overpowering or aggressive gruit/herbal character, allowing room for grainy maltiness to come through.

Appearance – Glowing yellow, cloudy. Dense white head. Better head retention than my previous efforts with this culture. Still not fantastic, but enough to snap a few pictures in the backyard. Good lacing.

Taste – Big lactic acidity, tangy. Minimal sweetness and bitterness. There are herbal notes, but also a citrusy (orange and lemon) character I usually associate with lightly dry-hopped sours.

Mouthfeel – Light and bright. This is the second sour in a row on tap that doesn’t seem to be getting as carbonated as the other taps despite the same pressure. Could be a little bubblier.

Drinkability & Notes – The sourness is at the high end of what I’m looking for. The pH reading was 3.03, but it doesn't taste quite that sour. Otherwise refreshing, just not the sort of beer I naturally gravitate to for a second pour.

Changes for Next Time – I’m satisfied with the experiment. The fresh herbs do lend a fresher flavor than dried herbs, less concentrated and distinct. Doubling the herbs would create a more “obvious” flavor, but as a beer on tap subtlety is a virtue. I’ll wait for the other half to see how it compares with age before making final proclamations on the process.

Recipe

Batch Size: 11.00 gal
SRM: 3.2
IBU: 0.0
OG: 1.047
FG: 1.009
ABV: 4.9%
Final pH: 3.03
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70%
Boil Time: 60 Mins

Fermentables
-----------------
90.0% - 18 lbs Rahr 2-Row Brewer's Malt
10.0% - 2 lbs Briess Red Wheat Malt


Mash
-------
Mash In - 60 min @ 153F

Hops
-------
None

Other
-------
3.50 oz Ground Ivy @ 60 mins
1.00 oz Yarrow Leaves @ 60 mins
0.50 oz Peruvian Salt (Mines of Maras) @ 15 min
1.00 oz Yarrow Flowers/Stems @ Whirlpool

Water
-------

Calcium	Chloride	Sulfate	Sodium	Magnesium	Carbonate
50	30	50	15	10	90

Yeast
-------
Right Proper House Lacto Blend

Notes
-------
Brewed 7/8/17 with Carlos

Made a 3.5L starter with the Right Proper House Lacto culture that had been sitting in my fridge for... six months. Seemed to start up well.

Ground ivy harvested from the backyard that morning. Yarrow harvested three days prior on Cape Cod.

Chilled to 80F and pitched RP Lacto (left at 80F). Other half left at 65F for 6 hours to drop a bit cooler before pitching Cherry Funk (left at 65F).

7/22/17 Racked the Giga half to secondary (1.012, mildly tart).

7/26/17 Kegged the Right Proper half with 3 oz of table sugar to carbonate (1.009, firm acidity). Seal was not good, didn't hold pressure.

8/6/17 Moved the Right Proper half to the keggerator, fixed the lid, and attached to gas. Final pH 3.03... not confident in that reading.

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Faux-IPA (India Pale Gruit) Tasting

Many of the flavor compounds residing in Reinheitsgebot-approved beers are found elsewhere in nature. A few example: isoamyl acetate in hefeweizen (and bananas), linalool in hops (and coriander), and citronellol in Citra (and lemongrass). While these compounds can have several sources, each imparts additions flavor compounds (as a result, adding lemongrass to your Cascade IPA isn’t a cheap substitute for Citra).

It is a fun way to get ideas though, and for this batch I went high concept. What if I replaced the standard flavors of American hops with spruce tips and grapefruit zest? Knowing that the balance would be different, but still wondering what the result would be! While I am calling this beer a gruit, it bears little resemblance to the medieval European beers flavor with a secret blend of bitter herbs and spices (part seasoning, part tax). It is a gruit only in so much as it does not contain hops.

Spruce-Grapefruit IPG

Appearance – Looks like an IPA. Check! Pale gold, slight haze, with a creamy white head. The foam isn’t as lasting or sticky though, I miss the hops already!

Smell – Smells more soda-pop than IPA. Sweet candied citrus peel and Christmas tree needles. So much so that I'm struggling to pick-up much else. Lacks the deeper herbal, dank, resiny flavors that even “piney” and “citrusy” hops provide. The aromatics are so bright and clean though, unlike any other beer I've tried.

Taste – The grapefruit comes in at the front, morphing into spruce as it crosses the palate. There is certainly some bitterness, the equivalent of maybe 15-20 IBUs. Despite the lack of preservative hops it is very clean, score one for my sanitation process! Mildly toasty malt pokes through occasionally. It also tastes remarkably fresh compared to how a five month old IPA would by this stage.

Mouthfeel – Smooth medium body. It has solid carbonation, firmly effervescent. No tannins or other harshness to distract from the holiday spirit.

Drinkability & Notes – One of the weirder and more exciting beers I’ve brewed recently. I won’t say that I love it, or that I’m planning another iteration anytime soon, but I enjoy this faux-IPA more than I expected to! It would be more drinkable if the spruce and grapefruit were dialed back ~25%, but where would be the fun in that? Next time I’d add 30 IBUs of bittering hops, and maybe a few ounces towards the end of the boil to give it some backbone and depth.

Spruce-Grapefruit India Pale Gruit

What defines beer styles? Is it the process, ingredients, or maybe where they are brewed? For me it comes down exclusively to what is in the glass. How the beer looks, smells, and most importantly tastes. I'm not saying divorcing recipe from results is easy; congratulations if you are able to brew a delicious hefeweizen with a single-infusion mash, stout without roasted barley, or lambic in Milwaukee! What would happen then if you tried to brew an American IPA without hops, the source of its style-defining pine and citrus aromatics? I decided to find out, brewing a 10 gallon batch split between a "Real" IPA brewed with hops and a faux-IPA flavored with real citrus and spruce!

Even though there are probably a few aroma compounds shared by hops and their substitutes, there is no way to completely replace the flavor of Cascade with grapefruit zest or Chinook with spruce tips. Still, this basic idea was my inspiration for this India Pale Gruit. Rather than mix hops in and accent with the other aromatics, I wanted to taste how they performed on their own. Neither of these ingredients contribute the level of bitterness that hops can, so I resigned myself to that difference at least.

I've added citrus peel to numerous batches (e.g., Grapefruit APA, Lemliner Weisse), so I won't spend much time writing about the importance of using the aromatic zest without much of the bitter pith. While I have brewed with spruce once before, with Nathan in our Scandinavian Gruit Kvass, it deserves a bit more attention. While spruce can be foraged in many places (like Nathan did for Right Proper's Invisible City of Bladensburg), I decided to be lazy and order from the Internet. Spruce is said to be at its best in spring just as the papery covers fall away from the pale new growth. These young trimmings provide a mild and citrusy flavor, which is much less resinous than older growth clippings. Once harvested they can be vacuum bagged and frozen just like hops (without the need for drying).

Gordon Strong, in his underrated Brewing Better Beer, quotes Pete Devaris who suggests measuring spruce tips by volume. This is because the amount of water they contain can vary their weight, but won't significantly change their volume. I added one loosely packed pint of spruce tips near the start of the boil to extract sugars and as much of the character as I could. I then added more at flame-out to ensure some of the more delicate character survived (allowing them to sit hot for about 30 minutes before running the chiller).

Spruce beers often age well, so I wanted to brew it early enough that it would make a nice holiday beer as the combination of pine and citrus is certainly reminiscent of Christmas! It took the zest from a fourth grapefruit in the keg to get the citrus aroma where I wanted it. I had saved some spruce for a fermentor addition, but it proved unnecessary. The batch is on tap now, so expect tasting notes later this week!

Spruce-Grapefruit IPG

Recipe Specifics
--------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 13.35
Anticipated OG: 1.061
Anticipated SRM: 3.8
Anticipated IBU: 0.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 69 %
Wort Boil Time: 90 Minutes

Grain
-------
60.0% - 8.00 lbs. Rahr Pilsener
30.0% - 4.00 lbs. Great Western Pale Malt
7.5% - 1.00 lbs. Weyermann Wheat Malt
2.6% - 0.35 lbs. Simpsons Golden Naked Oats

"Hops"
------
1 Pint (2.38 oz) Spruce Tips @ 60 min.
2 Grapefruits' Zest @ 5 min.
1 Grapefruit's Zest @ 0 min.
1.25 Pints (3.00 oz) Spruce Tips @ 0 Min.
1 Grapefruit's Zest @ Keg

Extras
-------
0.50 Whirlfloc @ 15 min.
0.50 tsp Yeast Nutrient @ 15 min.

Yeast
------
White Labs WLP007 Dry English Ale

Water Profile
----------------
Profile: Washington, Hoppy

Mash Schedule
-----------------
Sacch - 60 min @ 156 F

Notes
-------
8/22/14 - Made a stir-plate 3 L starter with 2 tubes of WL007. Aiming for 450 billion cells. Crash chilled after 24 hours. Half for this batch

Brewed 8/24/14

5 g CaCl and gypsum added to the mash along with 2 tsp of phosphoric acid. Diluted with 2 gallons of distilled. Collected 7 gallons of 1.075 first runnings. Same treatment for the 7 gallons of 180F batch sparge water. Collected 7gallons of 1.035 second runnings. Mixed so there were 7 gallons of 1.055 runnings in each pot.

Spruce tips from Spruce On Tap. 1 pint (2 3/8 oz added at 60 min). Half what is suggested in Gordon Strong's book.

10-year-old Microplane zester broke after those two. Potato-peeler strips of zest from the final grapefruit added at flame-out along with the rest of the spruce tips. Allowed to steep for 30 min before chilling to 70F.

5 gallons at 1.064 post-boil, topped off with .25 gallons of distilled water. Left at 65F to ferment.

8/30/14 Moved to warm ambient basement to ensure complete fermentation.

9/9/14 Kegged. Put in fridge to wait for a tap to open up.

11/29/14 Added zest of one grapefruit at tapping.

1/7/14 Tasting Notes. Happy with the result, even though it isn't particularly IPA-ish. If that was your goal, bitter with 30-40 IBUs, and possibly add some whirlpool hops to give it some hop aroma.

Gruits and Other Hopless Beers

A section removed from American Sour Beers:

Commercial Gruits

This was originally a portion of Chapter 11, which covered adding spice/herb flavors to stock sour beers that already contain hops, but there are also beers that contain no hops at all. For centuries European brewers added a blend of bitter and aromatic herbs called gruit to balance the sweetness of the malt. Beers brewed with a similar blend of herbs and spices are now known as gruits. Most of the historic spiced beers would have quickly developed a sour character because they lacked both the anti-microbial power of hops and pure strain fermentations.

While the exact gruit formulations were kept secret, the combination of yarrow (bitter, sage-like), marsh rosemary (spice, sour-ish), and sweet gale (spicy-eucalyptus) is generally regarded as the standard base. This is the combination many brewers add to their first batch of gruit, and it can work well (although generally not in equal parts).

For more historical accuracy you can add a small amount of smoked malt as HaandBryggeriet and Brouwerij de Molen did on their collaborative Menno & Jens (a gruit that had a unique flavor that was smoky, tart, and herbal). It included 80% wheat and rye, and was spiced with a combination of yarrow, Myrica gale, and mugwort. The result was complex, with all of those wild flavors playing with each other differently on each sip.

Rather than trying to recreate the flavor of historic gruits, some brewers make the concept their own. For example, Upright Brewing added lemongrass, hyssop, bitter orange peel, and Sichuan peppercorns to their Reggae Junkie Gruit. The herbs and spices were selected on a trip to a spice store. The resulting beer had a potent, though not overpowering fruity-herbal aroma. The brewers soured a portion of the batch in a gin barrel to create Special Herbs, part of their Sole Composition series.

As with hoppy sour beer it is best to go easy on bittering herbs (e.g., wormwood, sweet gale, yarrow, marsh rosemary, and Labrador tea) and instead concentrate on later additions for a more aromatic character; this is similar to the standard hopping strategy, as sour and bitter do not mesh together well. The bitterness from small amounts of herbs tends to be quick, not lingering like hop bitterness, which makes herbal bitterness somewhat more compatible with acidity. However, while hops need a long boil to isomerize their alpha acids to create bitterness, many other herbs contribute bitterness without undergoing a long boil (especially wormwood and mugwort).

Cambridge Brewing Company (CBC) is one of the most innovative American breweries when it comes to gruits and related hopless beers. Brewmaster Will Meyers was initially inspired by European beers like Williams Brothers Fraoch Heather Ale and the dubbel-ish Jopen Bier’s Koyt, but felt that they were too restrained in their spicing. When developing recipes, his first step was to evaluate the classic herbs, starting with smelling and tasting samples of each. Meyers steeped 2 tablespoons (30 mL) of each in a cup (237 mL) of 180°F (82°C) of water, tasting each after one, thirty, and sixty minutes. This gave him an idea of how much time each herb required for optimal extraction. Meyers raised the option of brewing single-herb experimental batches, but also said that he had not learned much more from them than he did from the teas. His biggest discovery from these trials was that he did not care for the strange sour flavor of marsh rosemary (Ledum palustre); substituting Labrador tea gave a flavor that was less aggressive and preferable to his palate. When Meyers uses marsh rosemary it is in small quantities, and only for the sake of tradition.

Meyers and his brewers harvest 1 pound of wild heather per barrel (.4 kg/hl) in Westport, Massachusetts (overlooking Buzzard's Bay) for their Heather Ale. The beer also receives a few ounces of lavender and sweet gale. Aged in Chardonnay barrels with Lactobacillus, and served at The BeerAdvocate Extreme Beer Fest Night of the Barrels festival in 2007, it tasted brightly acidic and remarkably fresh for a five-year-old 4% ABV beer. In this case, the sourness balanced the malt because none of the herbal additions provided much bitterness.

CBC's Weekapaug Gruit is a clean fermented beer based on a mash of pale and dark caramel malts, along with wheat, oats, and rye. It is fermented with their house Belgian ale strain, which is allowed a free-temperature rise. Weekapaug has the right balance of herbal complexity, but on tap it lacked the sourness that I loved in the aged Heather Ale. Luckily, the first bottled batch was nicely tart (possibly from the marsh rosemary). For a recent 10 bbl (12 hL) batch, Meyers added a substantial addition of 1 pound (.45 kg) of heather, but the rest of the additions were between a half and 4 ounces (14-113 g). Remember that these amounts are for a commercial batch, so for a homebrew amount an accurate scale with .1 gram precision is necessary. Early boil additions included stinging nettles, Labrador tea, heather, and aged hops. Additions at the end of the boil included yarrow, licorice root, as well as more nettles and Labrador tea. Meyers planted many of the more obscure herbs in a bog near the cabin where he produces 100 cases a year of grape wine as Linus Creek Wines. For each batch of Weekapaug he makes subtle adjustments to the recipe depending on the aromatic intensity of the individual herbs.
  
Gruit is one of the most interesting and least explored areas of commercial brewing today. They take the spicing of beer back to the same time that sour brewing brings the fermentation. A word of warning however, in addition to the well-known risks posed by alcohol, some of the herbs (most notably mugwort) that are added to gruits are extremely dangerous for pregnant women to consume. Hygieia: A Woman’s Herbal by Jeannine Parvati and Stephen Harrod Buhner’s encyclopedic Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers have more detailed information on herbs that are of concern.

Fire Pit Gruit

Craft brewers are not the only ones to feel the lure of gruit. In the summer of 2011 I drove out of DC to the border between Virginia and West Virginia to brew a gruit over an open fire with two gruit-nerds, Marty Fair and Martin Gross. When they started brewing gruits a couple years earlier they bought most of their herbs in bulk from online specialty shops, but have since started either growing and foraging many of the key ingredients for themselves. The only one of the mainstay herbs that is problematic to acquire is marsh rosemary, which they buy for 10 USD a jar from a Canadian who forages it. Like Will Meyers, they too feel that Labrador tea is the best easily accessible alternative.

They brew 30 gallons (114 l) at a time, boiling in three converted kegs that sit on a metal rack above an open fire pit. Fair builds guitars for a living, and as a result has plenty of scrap hardwood to burn. While certainly closer to the way beer was brewed for millennia before the discovery of natural gas and propane, the open fire did not add a noticeable character to the finished beers. However, their method certainly gave the brewing process a more primal feeling. The bow-hunted venison that was roasted over the fire, and then served for dinner only enhanced the experience.

The most impressive thing about the gruits they shared (Classic, Sage, Burdock Root etc.) with me was that despite being young they did not have an overpowering herbal flavor (something that plagues several of the commercial examples, like Professor Fritz Briem 13th Century Grut Bier). Fair and Gross are still tinkering with the timing of their herb additions, sometimes adding all of the herbs near the start of the boil, and others saving the more aromatics herbs for an addition 10 minutes from the end of the boil. Their gruits develop a tart character from being allowed to cool loosely covered outside overnight before they pitch dried yeast.

Brewing Fire-Pit Gruit

While the basic steps that go into brewing haven't changed much over the 6,000+ year history of the beverage, the ingredients and equipment certainly have. As a result, the beverage we call beer today doesn't share much in common with what was being brewed and drank 1,000 years ago. The most significant change to the ingredients over that time has been the dominance of hops over all other brewing herbs. Hops are the perfect spice for beer, they add bitterness, aromatics, boost head retention, inhibit Lactobacillus, and grow like weeds in northern climes (the same places where barley thrives and grapes do not). Even so, it is nice to try the alternatives sometimes to see what the other options are (even if just to affirm your choice).

Over Labor Day weekend I drove from DC out close to the border between Virginia and West Virginia to brew with one of the homebrewers who attended Brewing Locally. When Marty mentioned that he and his friend Martin brew gruit over an open fire, it sounded like an event that I couldn't pass up witnessing for myself. The combination of an arcane beer style, and an crazy brewing technique was something that seemed right up my alley.

Traditionally blends of herbs called gruit were used to balance the sweetness of the malt as well as their supposed medicinal benefits. I have brewed a couple non-hopped beers (Heather Ale, and the Winter Kvass), but I have yet to brew one with the classic combination of herbs that make up gruit.  Martin and Marty both seem confident that these herbs (yarrow, sweet gale, wormwood, marsh rosemary etc...) have a stimulative effect compared to drinking a couple hopped beers (hops being a sedative). I haven't noticed much difference, but for more information of these herbs and their supposed effects you can read Stephen Harrod Buhner's Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers.

Martin and Marty buy their herbs in bulk from an online spice/herb shop for the most part. The only one of the mainstay herbs that is hard to come by is marsh rosemary, which they buy for $10 a jar from a Canadian who forages for it (Labrador tea was suggested as the best easily accessible alternative). They have also started to grow some of their own and forage for local equivalents.  The most important aspect of brewing a good gruit is avoiding over-spicing (as most of the handful of commercial examples I've tried have been), which is something that the various gruits they served (classic, sage, burdock root etc...) avoided. They are still tinkering with the timing, sometimes adding all of the herbs near the start of the boil, others saving the more aromatics herbs for a later addition.

Propane is so popular with brewers because it is clean, easy to control, and compact, but it also adds ~$4 a batch onto my cost. Brewing over a fire has a romantic appeal, it makes brewing seem more like an event and less like a chore. If you want to brew over a fire you'll need something to suspend the kettle over the fire and a way to adjust the heat. A more complex rig could have a winch to raise and lower the fire, but in Marty's case he simply pulls the kettles partway off the fire when they threaten to boil-over. Another advantage of brewing over a fire is that it is easy to brew a couple batches at once over a single fire (we brewed three 10 gallon batches). Building guitars for a living and having a house out in the woods Marty has a lot of extra scrap wood to burn, but if you didn't you'd probably lose most of your savings from not buying propane by buying wood.  Martin has a web page with details of his slightly more elaborate fire-brewing rig.

They do not get a smoky flavor from boiling over the fire, or any additional caramelization (or melanodins) from the intense heat as far as I tasted.  The soot from the fire does blacken the kettles, but this isn't a big deal.  The biggest disadvantage is that tending the fire to ensure that it is hot enough to boil the wort is one more thing to worry about.

To cool the beers they simply leave the kettles covered overnight before transferring the cool wort to carboys and pitching yeast the next morning. The wooden lids are not tight fitting, which allows ambient air to be sucked in as the wort cools and contracts.  As a result of this (and the lack of preservative hops) all of the beers I tried had a wonderful refreshing tartness that mingled surprisingly well with the herbal bitterness. Sour and bitter and not normally flavors that combine pleasantly, but it this case the bitterness comes through in the front with the sourness holding off until the finish.

It was a terrific way to spend a day, capped off with a delicious dinner of venison (which Marty had hunted) roasted in a pot over the same fire we were using to brew. Not sure that I'll be building a fire in my small backyard to brew anytime soon, but it certainly inspired me to try my hand at a traditional gruit.

Martin's Classic Gruit
10 gallons:
Mash 1/2 a bag (25 lbs) of American pale malt in the low 150s F (strike water ~165 F).

After 60 minutes of conversion, run-off, batch sparge, then bring wort to a boil.  They do not recirculate which leaves the beer hazy, and looking like a medieval beverage.

3 oz yarrow and 1 oz wormwood for bittering near the start of the boil.
1/2 oz each of myrica gale (sweet gale) and marsh rosemary (or Labrador tea) as finishing in the last 10 minutes of the boil.

Allow to cool naturally overnight.  In the morning rack to fermenters, pitch US-05, and allow to ferment.  When fermentation is complete prime and bottle.

Jasmine-Hibiscus Summer Ale Tasting

This batch started out as the second half of the same base beer that produced the Heather Gruit; the only difference between the two was that they had different flowers added at bottling.  It is amazing how much impact the flowers have on the entire character of the beer, from the appearance to the flavor. 

Hibiscus is an interesting flower (sepal technically, i.e the part of the flower that isn't the petal), widely used in beverages around the equator. The most notable characteristic is the bright red color the dried flowers impart to whatever liquid they are steeped in. The flavor of hibiscus is tart and cranberry like, making it an interesting addition to either a refreshing summer beer, or a holiday beer.

The aroma from jasmine flowers are most often imparted to green tea before brewing (although I've also seen them included in with the tea leaves).  The volatile compounds are very delicate so adding jasmine as late as possible in the brewing process is a good idea.

I'm really happy with how this one turned out, but the light/fruity flavor is hard to fully appreciate while the weather is so dreary.

Jasmine-Hibiscus Summer Ale

Appearance – Talk about a red ale! (Although if pushed I'd have to call it more pink than red). Almost clear, with a slight haze that will hopefully drop out with a bit more age. The head is tight/white and hangs around for a couple minutes.

Smell – Tart berry aroma with some floral aspects. The jasmine comes off slightly soapy, but the fruity hibiscus takes the lead. There isn't much of the yeast or malt character I smelled in the heather/lavender half of the batch.

Taste – Smooth and mild with a slight tartness that is only marginally stronger than the other half of the batch. This one tastes cleaner as well, it makes me wonder how much of that rustic character was the yeast and how much was the heather. Light cranberry flavor makes it really quenching. Subtle bready malt lets you know it isn't a “malt” beverage.

Mouthfeel – Medium-light body with moderate carbonation. This one could use a bit more carbonation; spritzy complements a light/crisp beer like this.

Drinkability & Notes – This will be a great summer beer (not that I'm looking forward to the hot season here in DC). The lack of bitterness makes this something that can be drank quickly, while the flowers and slight tartness keep it balanced.

Heather Ale Tasting

A few years ago Sam Adams ran a commercial that said,"Hops are to beer what grapes are to wine."  well obviously that isn't true, but hops and beer are certainly synonyms.  That hasn't always been the case though, 500 years ago brewers added lots of other herbs and spices that provided counterpoint to the malt sweetness of beer.  One example of that practice was the people of Scotland, who harvested heather flowers (tips) to add to their beers.

My first attempt at a heather ale turned out well, with a nice balance despite the lack of hop bitterness.  I've been told that heather (especially the stems) can be boiled to extract some bitterness, but I decided to steep the flowers in hot water to just extract the aromatics.  The balance comes from some acidity provided by Lactobacillus and tannins from a small amount of oak cubes added to the primary fermentation.  I was hoping for a bit more lactic sourness, but hopefully that will come with more time in the bottle.

Last week this batch took 4th place (out of 16 beers) in the DC Homebrewers Cherry Blossom competition.  Oddly that was the same spot my Honey Wheat Flower Sour landed last year.

Heather Gruit

Appearance – Hazy pale-amber beer (looks the part of a historic ale, a bit darker than I expected for just Maris Otter and wheat malt). The head is white and has decent retention despite the lack of hops.

Smell – Floral, meadow, a bit yeasty. The heather aromatics are at about the right level for me, although I think it may improve as they soften and integrate into the aroma over the next few months.

Taste – The heather permeates the flavor mingling with the earthy yeastiness and grainy malt. The lactic acid provides a slight lemony tartness, but it really isn't sour at all. It has a great fresh quality to it that goes perfectly with spring. No bitterness, but it doesn't taste sweet or unbalanced.

Mouthfeel – Moderate body with a slight tannic roughness. The carbonation is medium-low, which goes well with the historic quality of the beer.

Drinkability & Notes – I tend to like gruits with a few years of age on them, but this one has a mellow enough herbal character that it is drinkable just a few weeks after bottling. A nice complex, weird session beer. It will be interesting to see how this one changes as it ages.

Adding Flowers to a Gruit

About a month ago I posted the recipe for the base gruit I brewed.  It was a simple recipe, unhopped (obviously) but also without any of the other botanicals you'd expect in a gruit.  I should say that I'm using gruit in the generic sense to mean a beer flavored with something besides hops, and not necessarily the classic combination of bog myrtle, yarrow, and wild rosemary. A few weeks later when the beer had fermented out and was ready to bottle I spent a few hours making teas by steeping the various flowers, as well as tasting, blending, and bottling.

The base beer was alright on its own, but a bit bland.  The Lactobacillus didn't add as much sourness as I was hoping for (especially considering there weren't any hops to inhibit it), but it did add a touch of acidity that helped balance the residual malt sweetness.  Similarly I couldn't taste the oak, but I suspect the tannins it added helped cut through the malt.  The Scottish Heavy yeast strain was pretty clean, but it did leave some earthy/rustic character that really made the beer taste more "historic."

To make the flower teas I used my French press.  With its built in filter it was a good choice, although it was a bit small for the amount of heather I used.  For all of the floral teas I used filtered water right off the boil, with a steep time of about 5 minutes.  Boiling did not seem to extract more desirable compounds than steeping, but that may not hold true if you are using other botanicals (flowers tend to have more delicate aromatics than barks or roots).

After smelling all of the teas I decided to pair heather with lavender for half of the batch.  Heather has a nice hay/meadow aroma and was used in many Scottish beers before hops displaced it.  The place I ordered from sells just the flowers (as opposed to the type sold at homebrew store that still has the stems attached).  It still took two ounces of heather steeped with enough water to extract 2.5 cups of tea.  Lavender is more potent (think potpourri or soap).  I had read that culinary lavender tends to have a more food friendly aroma, but I could only find English lavender (although that is one of the flowers Southampton uses in their excellent Cuvee des Fleurs).  I used just one tablespoon in half a cup of water, and then I only added two tablespoons of the resulting tea.

For the second half of the batch I wanted to do something a bit more unique. I decided to combine hibiscus and jasmine flowers. Hibiscus is a traditional flavoring in Mexican sweetened waters (agua de Jamaica) and can often be found in a local market.  It has a great fruity, tart, cranberry flavor and imparts a beautiful garnet color (Brasserie Dieu Du Ciel uses it to great effect in Rosée D'hibiscus).  Jasmine has a very delicate floral aroma that is most often used in teas (Avatar IPA from Elysian Brewing Company uses it as well).  I used one ounce of each of these flowers, steeped separately with enough water to get 1.5 cups of extract.

After testing measured amounts of each of the teas on samples of beer I scaled up the ratios.  At that point I only added about 2/3 of the projected amount, giving me room to taste and adjust the blend.  In the end I left the flavors of both blends a little short of the where I wanted, counting on the carbonation in the finished beer to boost the aromas.  If I had been more ambitious I could have used my carb cap to carbonate samples before bottling.  I think this was a great way to take some control using ingredients that were new to me (and that don't have a commonly used amount).  Later this week I'll post reviews for both halves of this batch.

Tart Heather Gruit Recipe

I've always had a luke-warm opinion of gruits (in the general sense gruits are beers that are bittered with herbs other than hops).  In particular the bottle of 13th Centurary Grut Bier I tried came off as a muddled mess of spices and herbs.  I did enjoy an aged-out bottle of Two Druids Gruit a couple years after Heavyweight Brewing folded; more recently I've had a couple interesting samples from Thornbridge Brewery (Merrie), and Williams Brothers (Grozet) both on cask, but none of those was something I wanted more than a few ounces of.

While I was up in Boston for Night of the Funk in November I sampled a lot of weird/unique/intereting beers, but there were only a handful that I would call inspiring.  Cambridge Brewing's 2006 Heather Ale was one of those, it had a nice tartness (from time spent in a Chardonnay barrel with Lactobacillus) and a soft honey/hay aroma from the fresh heather tips (as well as lavender and sweet gale).  CBC does a couple of other gruits, but this is the only one I've tried with a sour character.

I have enough long aged sour beers already aging so I wanted to brew something for quicker consumption, to accomplish that I borrowed a few moves from my Berliner Weisse method.  I did a quick mash with Marris Otter and wheat malt, followed by brief a 15 minute boil (just enough to ensure the wort was sanitary).  I didn't add any herbs to the boil because I'm planning to split the batch, half with lavender and heather, and rest with other flowers (hibiscus, jasmine, and chrysanthemum).  I'll make teas with each of the flowers and then dose the beer(s) to taste, allowing me to fine tune the extraction time and flavor contribution for each one (more on that later). 

With the "plain" wort cooled I pitched a cup of yeast slurry harvested from the 90 Shilling Stout I brewed two weeks earlier along with some of the multi-strain Lacto culture I keep going.  A quarter ounce of boiled/drained oak went into the primary to impart a slightly rustic woodsy character.  Hopefully this beer will have lots of subtle complexity, something I can drink an entire bottle of without waiting years for the herbal flavors to mellow.

Experimental Tart Gruit

Recipe Specifics
---------------------
Batch Size (Gal): 4.75
Total Grain (Lbs): 8.00
Anticipated OG: 1.044
Anticipated SRM: 5.8
Anticipated IBU: 0.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 15 Minutes

Grain
------
75.0% - 6.00 lbs. Maris Otter
25.0% - 2.00 lbs. Wheat Malt

Water Profile
-----------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
-------------------
Sacch I 30 min @ 155
Sacch II 10 min @ 162

Extras
-------
0.25 Oz Medium Toast French Oak Cubes

Yeast
-------
East Coast ECY07 Scottish Heavy
White Labs WLP677 Lactobacillus

Notes
-------
Brewed 1/29/11

Collected 5 gallons of wort

Pitched 1.5 cups of surry from Scottish Stout plus a cup of lacto starter. .25 oz of french oak boiled for 3 minutes, then drained and added as well to primary. Primary ~63 Fambient. Good fermentation after 12 hours.

3/5/11 Blended with teas made from flowers. 2.75 gallons bottled with 2.5 cups of strong heather tea (made with ~2 oz of heather flowers steeped for 6 minutes), a 1 tbls of lavender tea (made with 2 tbls of English lavander). 1 5/8 oz of cane sugar added for carbonation.

2 gallons bottled with 1.5 cups of hibiscus tea and 1.5 cups of jasmine tea, both with about 1 oz of flowers.  1 1/8 oz of cane sugar added for carbonation.  FG 1.011

3/30/11 The heather half of the batch turned out well.  Nice balance, good heather flavor, not too sweet.

3/31/11 The jasmine-hibiscus half is really quenching, light, and bright.  The flavors work well together, should be perfect for summertime.

Smoked Spruce Gruit Kvass Tasting

After it was pointed out that De Molen is Dutch (and thus not Scandinavian) I've decided to just call this beer what it is, a smoked-spruce-elderberry-sour-gruit-kvass...  I really like this beer, but it isn't the type of thing I would want to have on tap.  The flavors are intense, and take a few sips to get used to.

Gruit Kvass

Appearance – Muddy amber-brown. The thin white head recedes quickly.

Smell – Sharply smoky. Almost comes across as peat, it might be the resiny spruce mingling with the beech wood smoked malt. Behind the singed woodlands there is some yeasty/bready “rustic” character.

Taste – Strong lactic acidity, that is a surprising after experiencing the aroma. The finish recalls the nose, smoky and bready (maybe a hint of pine). It is dry enough, and with the acid for balance I don't miss the hop bitterness. I don't get much from the elderberries.

Mouthfeel – Medium body, a bit more substantial than the East End Kvass (which works well with the more assertive flavors). The carbonation is moderate, which helps to clean the palate of all of the heavy flavors.

Drinkability & Notes – The smoke has already calmed down a bit, but I'd suspect that this will continue to get better for awhile. It will be interesting to see how this beer ages, certainly a nice first attempt at a gruit (but I'd like to do something with more spices and less smoke next time around).

Scandinavian Gruit Kvass Recipe

After Nathan and I brewed East End's recipe for Kvass, we decided to crank out a couple more kvasses with recipes of our own design. The first was inspired by a sample of Menno & Jens (a gruit that had a unique flavor that was smokey, tart, and herbal) a collaboration between the two Scandinavian breweries (Haandbryggeriet and De Molen).

Nathan took the standard kvass recipe and morphed it into a complex Scandinavian gruit.  The smoke character came from three pounds of Weyermann rauchmalt, a sizable addition for a beer that barely topped 4% ABV.  For winter spicing we added blue spruce (for evergreen aromatics) and elderberries (for dried fruit character).  The sourness was provided by Lactobacillus resident in the dried bread yeast working unconstrained by hops.

This was the first batch of beer I have brewed that was devoid of hops.  While today beer and hops are culturally (and in some cases legally) synonyms, this has not always been the case.  For centuries political and religious institutions required the use of gruit (a secret spice blend often containing mugwort, yarrow, marsh rosemary among others) both as a counterpoint to the sweet malt (beers were often far less attenuated than today) and as a way to tax/control brewing.  Hops became the dominant seasoning for beers only about 500 years ago, as a result of their ability to add bitterness as well as inhibit lactic acid producing bacteria.

Our method of incorporating the bread (by soaking it overnight in 190 degree water, pureeing it with a stick blender, and then adding it to the boil) was identical to our previous batch of kvass, but this time we used a loaf of pumpernickel bread in place of the standard seeded rye.  We hoped the darker bread would be a better complement for a slightly stronger beer intended for fall/winter drinking.

The results were intriguing, one of the most flavorful low alcohol beers I have tried.  Granted the beer is still young, but it turned out a bit smokier and not as sprucey as we intended.

Scandinavian Kvass

Recipe Specifics
-----------------
Batch Size (Gal): 5.25
Total Grain (Lbs): 7.50
Anticipated OG: 1.040
Anticipated SRM: 11.9
Anticipated IBU: 0.0
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Grain
------
40.0% - 3.00 lbs. Maris Otter
40.0% - 3.00 lbs. Rauchmalt (Bamberg Smoked)
6.7% - 0.50 lbs. Rye Malt
6.7% - 0.50 lbs. Brown Malt
6.7% - 0.50 lbs. Crystal Rye

Extras
------
5 g Blue Spruce @ 30 min
20 g Dried Elderberries @ 0 min

Yeast
-----
Red Star Bread Yeast

Water Profile
-------------
Profile: Washington DC

Mash Schedule
-------------
Sacch Rest 60 min @ 152

Notes
-----
Brewed 9/24/10 with Nathan and Devin

1 gallon of pumpernickel bread puree (1 loaf) added before the start of the boil.

5 grams spruce at 30

20 grams dried elderberries lightly crushed at flameout

Pitched 1 gram of rehydrated Red Star bread yeast once the wort was cool. 

Left in Nathan's basement ~75 degrees to ferment.

FG 1.010

10/08/11 Turned out well, powerful smoke (mingling with the spruce) and as predicted bread yeast and no hops made for a tart beer.

Book Review: Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers

Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation by Stephen Harrod Buhner is a book that takes a devotes more than 500 pages to the ingredients and techniques that were once apart of beer brewing before the pale European lager conquered the world. It covers some beers that most beer nerds will have heard of and a few will have brewed, gruit, kvass, and sahti for example, but for the most part it talks about things that very few people will have heard of (let alone brewed), nettle beer, oak bark ale, and saffron beer for example.

To being truthful I have not read this entire book. Large sections are not so much about the flavor/technique of using these ingredients as much as they are about the history and supposed health benefits of the different herbs/spices discussed. I do not see enough evidence to support the health benefits of self medicating with plant material, so these sections just did not hold my interest.

Content: The first chapter starts out with a nice story about the trek into the rain forest to taste a primitive beer. A beer which given the rapid spread of "culture" and mega-breweries is now in danger of being a forgotten relic of the past. The tale and the rest of the first chapter provides the framework for the rest of the book: tradition, respect for nature, and the healing powers of plants.

The second chapter covers honey and mead. The author claims that traditionally mead makers would simply put the entire hive (angry bees and all) into the water to extract the honey. He claims that this technique lead to getting a much better nutritional punch from the mead as it contained such ever popular folk remedies as royal jelly, venom, and propolis.

The third chapter talks about yeast. I had heard some similar stories of how people originally preserved their yeast between batches (drying it onto a stick, vessel, or cloth), but it was interesting to read about this in more detail since wild yeast is something of a passion of mine. The author makes an attempt to talk about wild yeast, but ends up referring to several strains of bacteria as yeast (clearly microbiology is not his strong suit).

The fourth chapter looks at "sacred" indigenous beers. This is one of the more interesting chapters as it covers different styles that you may have heard of, a couple of which are still produced commercially. I have gotten the chance to try some of these beers like Sahti, and while it was not to my taste I could see someone actually wanting to brew a full batch of it.

The next chapter is a pretty short chapter looking at the role of alcohol culturally and on the body (through the eyes of native people). The author's main point is that alcohol has a long standing role as an important additive to human life and culture, and is inseparable from the alcoholic beverages we enjoy.

The six chapter discusses the different grains used in brewing. It makes you appreciate just how lucky we are to have malted grains so we don't have to use the amylase enzyme in our saliva to covert the starches in grains to sugar. The chapter does a good job discussing the fact that the barley we consider to be the basis for brewing is really just one of many different base grains used through the history of beer.

The seventh chapter looks at "highly intoxicating" brews. This may be the chapter that some of you are the most interested in. That said given the low level of "modern" (that is to say reliable) sources sited I would be worried about throwing in some of the proposed ingredients into one of my brews.

The next two chapters talk about the wide variety of brewing ingredients that come from trees and other plants. Each section talks about how a particular herb/spice/bark/extract was traditionally used in beer making, its purported health benefits, and a sample recipe to try. The outlandish health benefits that are claimed for many of the ingredients often make you laugh, as do the calls to arms against the modern treatment of disease.

The appendices cover such things as basic (and I do me basic) brewing technique, mead making, and sources for some of the stranger ingredients mentioned. The brewing instructions are so lax that they make Charlie Papazian look like an uptight process nerd. I understand that ancient people did not have star-san (or germ theory) and still made passable beers, but I doubt many batches hung around for more than a week after brewing.

Recipes: The recipes are pretty much all over the place. Many of the recipes appear to have been plucked directly from old texts, so they should make for pretty authentic beverages. That said for the most part they seem like they would taste terrible. Many of the recipes contain no malt (lots of sugar/molasses based recipes).

I often feel like the herbs/spices used are also in ludicrous amounts (1/2 oz of saffron in a 1 gallon recipe? Granted he is trying to get a psychotropic effect, but that's $132-$230 at Penzeys). Things like this make me doubt whether the author tried brewing many of the recipes in the book. It would have been very interesting to see the tasting notes for some of the recipes at least.

As a result I don't feel confident using them as a guide when designing my own recipes.

Accuracy: My major complaint is the author seems to take anything that was written before 1900 and assume that it is accurate. If a claimed health benefit or recipe sounds a bit off, the author should make a note to let the read know. Citing several hundred year old references for the aphoristical qualities of gruit ale as if they were from a recent issue of JAMA seems irresponsible to me.

In general this book is written by someone who doesn't seem to care about science. He calls yeast a plant for example (a kingdom level mistake is pretty embarrassing).

Readability: Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers is a pretty dry read unless you are interested in more than just the brewing information. If you have an interest in a particular additive or historic beer that section would be a decent reference, but in terms of a casual book for the average homebrewer it is close to unreadable.

Overall: While it has some interesting parts, overall it is not a great brewing book. If the historical recipes section of Radical Brewing really caught your imagination this would be a worthwhile read, otherwise you probably don't need a copy.

Book Review: Radical Brewing

Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing is the sort of homebrewing book that I wish I could write. While it does include some basic instructions for the new brewer the main focus is on things that fall outside the realm of "traditional" brewing. Topics covered include using raw grains, sugars, fruit, herbs, spices, liquors, as well as interesting technique, recipes, and history.

It is the perfect book to flip through for inspiration when you feel like you haven't brewed anything really interesting in awhile, but it is not the sort of book that I would recommend to someone who has just started brewing beer at home.

Content: The first few chapters of the book contain a basic look at the malt and hops, and how to brew and taste beer. If this was your first book you would probably be able to make a decent beer, but a book aimed at beginning brewers will contain more basic information that would prove helpful.

The rest of the chapters each take an element of beers/brewing and run with it, with the recipes in each chapter giving an example of how to use the ingredient/technique discussed. The first of these is an attempt to cover some of the most basic styles (blondes, stouts, brown ales etc...). That said even these most basic recipes are probably complex than any recipe in How to Brew, how can you not love a book that includes a 1.085 Brett spiked IPA as a "Basic Drinker"?

Some chapters look at a technique. Lagers get a chapter covering how they differ from ales (including how to do a traditional decoction mash), but most of the book is primarily about ales. The chapter on brewing big beers is a good read for anyone who wants to do strong beers of any sort. Mosher covers the basics like correcting hopping rates to deal with the high gravity, pitching lots of yeast, and waiting plenty of time, but also looks at old mashing techniques like the parti-gyle and doble-doble for achieving a high OG without a 4 hour boil.

Other chapters look at groups of beer styles. For example there are a couple that look at different Belgian beer styles (variations on wits are given almost an entire chapter). There are also chapters on beers that bend style guidelines (gratzer, pilsener wine, and Black Ship Pirate Stout), and historical beers (including gruit, kvass, colonial ale, and kotbusser). Many of the weirder foreign/historical styles are given both in an authentic form and a "cheaters" version which is easier to pull off (and probably more to the average homebrewer's palette).

Other chapters look at a class of ingredients. Grains besides barley (including oddballs like wild rice, kamut, and millet), herbs/spices (including basil, cubeb pepper, and sassafras) and honey (with recipes for honey beers, and meads). It is hard to say more about these chapters as there isn't an underlying theme or topic, just a shotgun blast of possibilities. The suggestions I have used have worked out well for the most part, but often there are no firm recommendations for how/when to use many of the ingredients.

The book finishes up with some odds and ends like things to do with a group of brewers, pairing beer and food, brewery building, and growing/processing your own ingredients. This is a great place to look when you feel like you are in a rut with the hobby.

Accuracy: The actual content of the book is terrific and accurate as far as I can tell, but the editing is the biggest weak point Radical Brewing. The numbers in particular are just off all over the place. Mainly this takes the form of bad metric/standard/percentage conversions in the recipes (how hard could that have been to double check?). The estimated ABV also seems to be lower than it should be for most recipes given the OG.

This caused me a serious problem on a wit a few years back. I made the Wit Guy White Ale exactly to spec, hitting just .002 above the suggested OG of 1.052. After 14 days of fermentation the beer was down to 1.019, that seemed a bit high, but it had held stable for 5 days and was at 4.6% ABV (well above the recipe spec of 3.6-4.2% ABV) so I decided to bottle it. Needless to say WLP400 is well known for stuck fermentations and I ended up with 2 cases of massively overcarbonated beer (it ended up down to 1.013). This is the sort of minor editing mistake that can cause major issues for the new brewer.

The author does maintain a list of errata that you can reference any time you want to make a recipe (not that the ABV issue is even mentioned), but this is a pain to check if you are just flipping through the book.

Recipes: Nearly 130 recipes in total. Most of them have all of the details spelled out, but some of them are just variants of other recipes in the book, for example the Schwarzbock recipe is just a paragraph suggesting adding more carafa, base malt, and hops to the Schwarzbier recipe on the previous page.

The recipes and variants cover just about every conceivable type of beer from bitters, to lambics, historical beers, and style crushing creations like a chanterelle beer. Any time I feel like I want to brew something fun I'll flip through Radical Brewing until a recipe catches my eye.

Basically all of the recipes are all-grain, but most have a mini-mash or extract plus steeped grain option as well. One thing that might bother some people is that the author never gives a specific yeast strain suggestion. Most beers call for a country of origin, such as Belgian or English.

Readability: It is the perfect book for skimming. loads of charts, recipes, drawings, graphs, and text boxes. It is also not a very technical book so the reading is a it more enjoyable than How to Brew or Designing Great Beers. The text is well written and brimming with excitement, far better editing than the recipes received.

That said because of the huge variety of topics the organization can be pretty confusing. For example sugars are covered in the Bent Beers chapter, but a Belgian , Big Beers, or Historical chapter would have all been equally valid places to put it. I think trying to get all of these topics neatly organized into logical chapters was an impossible task from the start.

Overall: This was a harder book to review than any of the others I have done so far because it covers such a huge range of topics and doesn't have any major take away points.

After one or two "normal" batches of beer many new brewers seem to get the urge to brew something really out there. This often results in terrible beer. This would be a perfect book to pick up if you have a crazy idea that you want to refine into something that might actually be drinkable when you are done.

It is One of the most inspiring books I have, and a good replacement for the Complete Joy of Home Brewing fan who feels that the other books on their shelf don't have too many formulas and not enough fun.