Bottled the gruit ale last night. FG was around 1.010 before priming. Wish I had the OG! Oops! I couldn't find my priming sugar, so I used KreamyX from the Saison kit in my basement instead! I hope that turns out well.

The herbs were added directly to the boil. This is not a problem except that I also failed to sparge before adding the wort to the fermenter. With hops this isn't a big problem, as they settle to the bottom of the container, but heather tips and yarrow float! This clogged my racking cane and also got stuck in the bottle filler valve. When your bottle filler is stuck open you end up spilling beer!

Also, on lazysun's suggestion, I sanitized all the bottles in the dishwasher, on the high heat wash and high heat rinse cycle. I had 37 bottles after discarding quite a few that wouldn't come clean, in both 12oz and 16oz sizes. This was exactly enough for the 5 gallon batch minus the sediment.</lj>

I finally got all the ingredients necessary to make my Gruit Ale experiment. I based it on this recipe, but I had to make a couple changes based on the ingredients I could obtain.

• The malt powder is Munton's Dark. This is what it said in the recipe, although now that I look at the photo closer, I should have gotten amber instead. Oh well.
• I used light candi sugar instead of homemade invert sugar, whatever that is.
• The yeast is a White Labs Hefe-Weizen Yeast instead of the Wyeast 3068 because that is what the store had.
• I couldn't find anywhere that carried the specified Marsh rosemary, or its recommended replacement in North America, Labrador tea, at a price that was reasonable. Instead, I found Heather tips, sweet gale, and mugwort at Modern Brewer, and Yarrow root at The Herb Store. This gave me an herb profile closer to this ale, so I am using those timings for adding the herbs.
• I wasn't as picky about the honey. I jsut got a two pound honey bear squeezer when I picked up everything at Beer & Wine.
• I bought malto-dextrin but completely forgot to use it! Oops.

So, to recap everything I did:[Unknown LJ tag]

1. Steep the grains in a cloth bag in 2 gallons of water until the water is about to boil.
2. Once boiling, add the malt and sugars.
3. After 15 minutes, add half the yarrow and all the mugwort.
4. After an additional 15 minutes, add the gale.
5. 15 minutes later, add the remaining yarrow.
6. 10 minutes later, add the heather.

Now, some heather ale recipes call for two separate additions of the tips, but they aren't gruit ales. They're hopped! Not that I'm enough of an expert to know exactly what I'm doing yet :)

Oops, I just pitched the yeast and forgot to take a hydrometer reading.</lj>

I just got back from the brewing store with my father-in-law. I got most of the supplies needed to make my gruit ale. I'll be using this recipe with the following modifications:
- I'm not going to be that picky about the honey.
- Using light candi sugar instead of homemade medium.
- Will probably need Labrador Tea instead of Marsh rosemary.
- I have twice as much of the specialty grains as I need.
- I have a White Labs Hefe-Weizen yeast instead of the Wyeast Weienstephan Weizen.

I still need to find the herbs, as the brewing store didn't have any, plus brown sugar and blackstrap molasses.

I also picked up their recipe of the month kit: Bill's Farmhouse Ale. It's a Saison, which I dig. As such, I wish I had a bunch of the big 22 oz bottles that Saisons usually come in, but the corkers for these are so expensive! Upwards of $100! Obviously you can get bottles that are cappable as well, so I will be going after these. I'll need to drink that Stone barleywine soon!

As far as equipment goes, I snagged a bottle washer at the store. I think I have a capable thermometer for mashing, but I still need a proper strainer and funnel for sparging!