8th in the Brew - Gruit Mead

Hello All!

It's testing time again! I have been researching ways to "bitter" up my sweeter meads to try to get them to taste closer to beer. Most of what I had found were recipes that used hops, the main bittering and preservative agent in beers. My preference is to steer clear of hops as I'd rather not get that close to beer.

My research lead to gruit ale. This was a form of beer that used various spices and plants that formed a "gruit". These spices and plants were used as preservatives and add bitters. If you have been following from the previous paragraph you will know how excited that made me.

I chose to use Sage and Licorice Root in mine. However, unable to find Licorice Root (a plant not commonly produced in the States) I used the only alternative I could find Anise. Anise like licorice has a non-fermentable sugar that is also more potent that sucrose (common table sugar). The sugar in Anise is anethole.
Go ahead an read that whole Wikipedia page. You'll find that this is a great subtitute for licorice root.

Seeing as there are preservatives in this mead I was going to go for less ABV and try to naturally carbonate again. And thanks to the anethole it will still taste somewhat sweet even though I will ferment this to dryness.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

2 lbs of Clover Honey
1 oz Sage (or 2 Tablesppons)
1 oz Anise
1 tsp yeast
Water to one gallon.

Process:

Take a 3 quart pan and fill it with 2 quarts of water. Bring that water to a boil. No! I am not returning to the boil method. However, these herbs need to be boiled to be useful. Read on, read on....

Once the water is boiling toss in half an ounce of sage and the full ounce of anise. Boil this for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to fully cool to room temperature. I let mine cool without an ice bath and that took just over an hour and a half.

Remove all the sage and anise from the water and put the water in to the carboy. Put in all the honey and shake or use the lees stirrer to disolve the honey (guess which one I used!).

Top off with more water to one gallon.

Pitch yeast.