Stone Berlin Groundbreaking Collaborations

Anyone near the Richmond, VA Stone pickup location that can help as a proxy? Will send thank you beers from Chicago and a label.

 

An acknowledgement of why it did change @StoneBrewingCo would be appreciated

As far as the Surly switch I'm definitely ok with it

 

Any update on the Alesmith/Stone collab? Website says it was brewed on 3/20. Curious what was brewed.

 

I'm sure it's an IPA.

 

Back when Stone first rolled these out I recall there being a blurb somewhere saying that Peter Zien was looking into "Pre-Christ" beer recipes. At the time the speculation was that it would be a gruit.

 

I’m not aiming this at you, but it feels like people really misuse the word gruit. Sorry for getting nerdy (and I could be wrong about all this), but gruit wasn’t brewed before Christ. Gruit’s history is actually very connected to the church. I also have no idea why this site has “Scottish gruit” as a style. There must be some reason for this, but I’ve never seen anything that associates gruit with Scotland.

People here tend to call any beer made without hops gruit (especially if there’s some historical connection), but that perspective strikes me as terrible since the goal is codification and shared meaning... it’s like saying any fruit that isn’t an apple is an orange. Sorry for being preachy.

 

Oh my, does this mean the IPA debate will be going on still in the year 4018?

Am kinda interested in this too, since I never did any serious research into gruit, but always thought it was the collective descriptor of all the beers that had spices added before hops gained popularity as the preferred beer spice. Definitely would be happy to have smart folks give good info here.

 

This one about the Reformation, hops, taxes and the Church was posted here not too long ago- it's a pretty interesting piece that deserves another look anyway ():
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesal...mation-how-martin-luther-changed-our-beer-too

 

No offense taken, we're cool.

I wish I could remember WHERE I saw this go down...it might've been on this site. I just recall seeing a quote posted saying that it was "pre-Christ" followed by beer nerd speculation that favored gruit. Truth be told, I bought this beer too. I dont really care what it ends up being because well, Im stuck with it no matter what. Just wanted to give the guy who posed the question a little context. Cheers!

 

Probably because of the Williams Bros. 'Historical Beers of Scotland'- Fraoch, Kelpie and all that- being so well established, but not knowing how to categorize them other than lumping them in with other non-hop brews.

 

I'd guess that @TongoRad has pretty much the right of it.

The word "Gruit" derives from a German word for herb. It seems that its original usage was in German speaking areas of the Netherlands, Belgium and in western Germany. It seems to have originally referred to the mix of herbs being used rather than to a beer style.

As often happens with words, over time its meaning seems to have been extended to cover beers brewed using a mixture of herbs in flavoring or bittering.

Fraoch from the Williams Bros. is said to be based on a recipe using Heather that also predates the use of hops. In addition to Fraoch the Williams Brothers recreated a fairly successful set of "Historic Ales" brewed using native ingredients.

So it seems that "Scottish Gruits" can be thought of an identifiable subset of "Ancient Herbed Ales," much as Saison can be thought of as an indentifiable subset of Farmhouse Ales.

As with the Dogfish Head Ancient Ales series, to be sold in the US as beer they do have the minimum legally required use of hops.

 

You've got enough sense not to look to me then. I think drtth is right in that gruit actually refers to the herb mixture foremost. Here's a nice link with some info. And here's a great book if you really want to go deep.

Yeah, I always assumed that to be the case too, but it seems to be poorly done. Just going with something more generic like "historical beer" would be better (or at least something accurate would be better too). Once again, I could be wrong (or I could even be misinterpreting the intended word use of the category name), but "Scottish gruit" is something that never existed. That category description here even illustrates this. It first describes gruit from "continental Europe" in a paragraph, and then separately mentions "other ancient styles" and essentially lists the Williams Bros range. The actual category name as written is either clumsy, misleading, and/or inappropriate.

I disagree with the logic of the second part. See my response above. Scottish gruit is an inaccurate combination of terms. Or at least it makes about as much sense as using Scottish cannelloni as a food category. "Ancient" isn't even a good term since gruit is associated with the Middle Ages.

Regarding the first part of what I quoted, you know I'm a believer in the notion that meanings change... but that doesn't mean that we can use that as a blanket excuse for misrepresenting something or disregarding history. I don't even really buy into the notion that the meaning of gruit has changed. I just think we're being sloppy right now. Personally, I've encountered far more instances of the term being used in reference to what it actually was... but these instances are all outside of BeerAdvocate. People don't talk about gruit in reference to modern beverage all that much. Keep in mind that this very site is a big influence on the change of meaning for beer terms. I feel that the style list here should have some responsibility in that regard as an agent for "respecting beer." Other sources of info simply reproduce the exact same style list as this site. If you want to buy a bicycle bell with a graphic that states: "I love Scottish gruit ancient herbed ale" you can do so here. With great power comes great responsibility.

Sorry for derailing the thread. My other post was sincerely on topic since it was about the specific Stone beer.

 

While I don’t disagree with some of your points about history or correctness of usage, you seem to have been misled into thinking my hypothetical descriptive explanation was intended as a logical argument for justification of something. My apologies for whatever wording I used that created that confusion.

There is a difference between prescriptive and descriptive and in this case my comment was intended as descriptive only. The focus was intended to be on “how something may have occurred,” and not on “what is the correct thing that should have happened.”

IIRC, the French have a law stipulating that a term such as “email” should not be used since it is borrowed directly from English and is not of French origin. All official documents are required to use a French term instead. That law and its enforcement however have not stopped the “person on the street” from frequently using “email” when having a coverastion with friends. ( It’s not easy to regulate language use. )

Whether we like it or not, whether we think it should be that way or not, neither stands in the way of use (or misuse) in ordinary language over time.

So I submit that what @TongoRad suggested and the description I suggested of how that may have come about, remain plausible even in the face of what ought to or should have happened.

Again, apologies for having unintentionally scratched a sore spot.

 

I'm totally with you there. Back on topic, I heard the next Stone collaboration is going to be a "pre-Christ recipe" adjunct IPA.

@cavedave

 

Received an e-mail last night about the Stone/Alesmite collaboration beer. I was curious about the style.

Thanks for your email! The AleSmith collaboration was brewed and the style is a bock beer. As soon as we have a release date we will update the website here:https://www.stonebrewing.com/beer/stone-berlin-groundbreaking-collaborations


Stay tuned!



Cheers

 

Yeah, I tend to think of fairly ancient botanical and intoxicating beers without hops as more Nordic, but who knows? People were fermenting stuff long before anyone ever guessed. Anyway, Julius Caesar was in England 200 years before Christ was born, and that crew definitely took some kind of drink on the journey, more than likely wine from the south of modern France.