Scottish grut: heather and thistle beer

As I had to visit the beer writer’s wife’s ancestral seat in Scotland last week I decided upon a “when in Rome” attitude whilst picking up a couple of beers – nothing too trendy mind you, but certainly well worth noting here.

Fraoch Heather Ale

In the past beer has been brewed with a varied array of botanical ingredients – for example the monastic brewers of the Middle Ages used all kinds of additives in order to give their beers a characteristic taste. The additives varied widely with local preferences and these mixtures of herbs and other plants were known as grut or gruit. Fraoch Heather Ale is a Scottish example of this style dating back to 2000bc.

Fraoch Heather Ale

Brewed to an ancient Gaelic recipe for “leann fraoich” (heather ale) Fraoch has been skillfully revived and reintroduced by Scottish microbrewer Williams Brothers of Alloa and involves adding sweet gale and flowering heather to the malted barley before pouring the cooling liquor into a vat of fresh heather flowers where it infuses for about an hour before fermenting.

The outcome is a beer that is very floral on the nose with hints of honey and ginger. What’s surprising though is that the initial floral taste isn’t overwhelming and is balanced with light earthy notes (and may be a hint of mint) ensuring the overall feel isn’t too sweet. Its dry finish just adds to the intriguing qualities of a beer the Pict’s certainly got right and it just shows that reinvention (and not invention!?) can be the mother of good brews.

Blessed Thistle

Cairngorm, based in Aviemore, is a microbrewery on the up having already upgraded from humble beginnings in 2001 to a 20 barrel brewery to meet demand. With Blessed Thistle, like Williams Brothers, Cairngorm is revisiting a traditional Scottish method of making ale which uses thistles in the years before hops were widely available – the updated twist being the addition of goldings hops and ginger late in the brewing process to enhance the flavour.

Cairngorm Blessed Thistle ale

This gentle, dark beer (reddish brown in colour) has a fresh, fruity aroma tempered with late notes of chocolate, mirrored slightly in the taste. There is certainly a bitter background taste provided by the thistles with an ending citrus feeling. For me the ginger is lost somewhere in the mix and although this is a concept I can wholeheartedly endorse I feel a little underwhelmed by its outcome. Don’t get me wrong this is certainly worth trying and Cairngorm beers, especially the award winning Black Gold, are well worth seeking out, I just feel with a little tinkering this could go from an “ok” beer to one on a par with it’s Champion Beer of Scotland cousin.

Beer information:
Beer: Fraoch Heather Ale
Brewery: Williams Brewery
Style: Traditional Ale
ABV: 5%
Country: Scotland

Beer: Blessed Thistle
Brewery: Cairngorm
Style: Speciality Bitter
ABV: 4.5%
Country: Scotland