Medieval beer receipe

[Chris_1984]

I was just curious to know if anyone has attempted a medieval beer which is unhopped or perhaps found a receipe from an old source.
I have a spare 1 gallon demijohn that i want to put to good use and was thinking of trying something else.

 

[pittsy]

is that a brand name or are you on about mead ? i think they used to call it big beer back then and it had lumps of food in it and also little beer which i don't recall much about , little beer is prob where we get beer from now other than that no idea, :hmm: you could try a ginger beer thats a bit different perhaps

 

[Chris_1984]

Not a brand name, sorry.
Any beer receipes from the years 1100 right up to, say, 1500? Failing that, any other olde beer receipes?

 

[keith1664]

Not made one but i believe you're looking for something called Gruit.

http://www.fortunecity.com/boozers/brewerytap/555/gruit.htm

http://www.gaianstudies.org/articles6.htm

 

[oldbloke]

CJJB reckons:
The ancient Egyptians used rue in place of hops
We didn't have hops until returning soldiers from the Hundred Years War brought them over (1338-1453)
Up until then we used nettles, rosemary, etc etc
Doesn't give recipes though.

There are academics who specialise in this stuff, and they do publish learned papers, so lots of clever Googling may find something

 

[oldbloke]

Oh and the commercial ale Fraoch is flavoured with heather, but there may be some hops in it, I dunno. Dunno how you'd find out their recipe either.

 

[oldbloke]

Might be interesting
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pwp/tofi/medieval_english_ale.html
Seems to be just like any ale recipe (that has a few oats in it), but without the hops.

http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/brewing.html ought to be useful

 

[31bb3]

Hows this for a recipe
http://brewery.org/cm3/recs/13_23.html
one of the members did this it was apparently really nice