Flavored Beers
In a not so distant past, beer was brewed with an extended and varied array of botanical ingredients. The rural and monastic brewers of the Middle Ages used all kinds of “vegetable” additives, in order to give their beers a characteristic taste, combined with other specific attributes.
These additives varied widely with local preferences and traditions, and the availability of raw materials. Some examples of different flavorings are various fruits (especially berries), salt, herbs, spices, juniper berries, pine needles, and many other ingredients available to the brewer. The concoction of herbs and other plants used to provide taste and in some cases, preservative character, was known as grut or gruit. This was a particular feature of beer brewed during the Medieval period.
Today however, beer is almost exclusively brewed with only one single herb addition: Hops.
Most beer historians seem satisfied with the general idea that at one point in history, brewers finally discovered once in for all that Hops was the perfect, unchallengeable beer herb. All the others herbs and spices that went into Gruit simply faded into oblivion, unable to compete with the multifunctional and delicious Hops. Although today many brewers are picking up on these old ideas and making some interesting beers.
