Thursday, August 1, 2013

Gathering Goodies for Gruit: The Story of Antidote Ale

"Come one, come all, taste the salvation of creation. Cures scurvy, snake bites, tuberculosis, and witchcraft! Come try the one and only, Antidote Ale! "-Us joking around about our medicinal brew.
 
 
The first wave of ripe figs were happily harvested the other evening...
 
 
 
And the resulting goat cheese, fig and caramelized onion pizza was a big hit!
 
 

We got out for a little foraging on the north coast the next day. The goal was to gather mugwort and yarrow to use for bittering and Douglass fir needles for aromatics in a small batch of brew we were planning to make. We started above the fog...
 
 

Made our way into the marine layer...
 
 

And watched the sun set through the cool white mist enjoying every moment...



And every breath...



We gathered up our goodies in good time, and added a few fresh blackberries from the vine and the first of the Gravenstein apples from the orchards for a snack...

 
We then decided that it would be a good idea to gather some wild milk thistle seeds to add to the brew (great for the liver), which we roasted and ground with my homemade mortar and pestle...






Our home brew club, Brew North, requires that all brewers wear fancy hats while engaged in the ancient art...


A code even Abalone lives by...

We added the fresh mugwort and yarrow for bittering in a style of gruit (traditional hopless beer that predates the hops trade in northern Europe)...


 
And added the Doug fir boughs for aromatics (reserving a few for a later "dry hopping")...
 
 
Though a true Gruit uses no hops, we added four individual hop cones from the vine that grows out back for good luck...
 
 

 
This joker kept a close watch on the grog...
 

The recipe was experimental, and it showed...
 
 
But after a little cool down in a sink full of dirty cold dish water...
 

Antidote ale was fermenting like a champion!
We'll keep you posted on the outcome.
Keep the old ways alive!

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