Well met everyone.

I'm looking for primary or secondary resources (or later if I can properly document it) for recipes/descriptions of Saxon era alcohol. Lets be generous and even say up to the 12th C. Beer, mead, braggots, gruit, or even wine. I'd like to play with recreating these. Anything of the sort would be helpful. Thank you!

Like many on here, I am a member of the SCA, so the documentation is for A&S competitions and my own mental health.

I tried my hand at brewing a Heather Ale using gruit herbs instead of hops for an SCA brewing competition. It was very well received, but I think I will try some minor tweaks next brew session. It was a small batch, so the following recipe is for 1 gallon. I know not everyone is going to want 5 gallons (I made 2) of Heather Ale. So you can scale up or down easily.

1.5lbs Maris Otter

2oz Crystal 20

1oz Flaked Oats

1 gram Sweet Gale (60 minutes)

1 gram Sweet Gale (30 mintues)

1oz Dried Heather Tips (30 minsutes)

1oz Dried Heather Tips at flameout (steep for 30 minutes)

4oz Wildflower Honey at flameout

Primed with honey

Mash at 155 (no sparge)

Danstar BRY-97 Yeast or SafAle US-05

OG 1.048

FG 1.012

Tweaks for next brew session:

I will add the 60 min Heather addition to the mash. This will help cut down on the trub (heather tips are messy).

Add all of the Sweet Gale to the boil during the last 5 minutes. This seems to be the common practice with this herb. I was using it on a hopping schedule and I'm fairly sure it doesn't work like that.

I may add 2oz of Carapils for a touch more body.

Definitely use priming sugar instead of honey next time. It was a bit over carbonated.

If you wanted to use hops instead of sweet gale, then I would go with a clean bittering hop like Mangum to about 10-15 IBUs.

If you brew this, please let me know what you think and suggest improvement to the recipe.

no idea why this is sideways

Has anyone brewed a gruit before? Does anyone have any recommendations or recipes they've used before?

Does anyone have a list of period resources for brewing and recipes? What herbs were used before hops?

This sort of basic information would probably go well in the sidebar.

Who would be interested in doing a group brew in February? We agree on a style and period recipe. Everyone makes it and reports back on how things went, what you liked, disliked and what you might change. I would suggest something simple to start off. Maybe a basic gruit, but I’ll leave that up to the hive mind. Any interest?

I would love to give it a go, but does it require any particular yeast, and kind of quantity of honey is needed for a decent brew?

I'm a novice brewer and history buff. This seems like a very cool sub! I'm wondering if anyone has recipes for extract brewers that would approximate medieval beers. I know that German and Belgian monastery beers (trippels, dubbels, bocks) are more modern, correct?

Any other brewers here from the SCA? I’m the newly appointed baronial brewer for Highland Foorde. After looking through r/SCA it became quickly apparent brewing topics get lost in the sauce easily. So I thought a subreddit dedicated to period brewing would be a better place to ask questions and share ideas.