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All the United States New Hampshire Portsmouth Earth Eagle Brewings
Gastro Obscura

Earth Eagle Brewings

One of the few brewers in the U.S. experimenting with hop-free beers.

Portsmouth, New Hampshire

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Earth Eagle Brewings   Earth Eagle Brewings
Earth Eagle Brewings   Earth Eagle Brewings
Cynthia Graber, Butch Heilshorn, and Nicola Twilley at Earth Eagle Brewings   Photo by Kathi Bahr.
Earth Eagle Brewings   Earth Eagle Brewings
A bottle of gruit bier brewed in New York City based on a 13th century recipe.   Bernt Rostad/CC BY 2.0
  funerealephemera / Atlas Obscura User
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About

Humans have been drinking beer for at least 8,000 years—and, for almost all that time, beer looked nothing like the industrial lager or hop-heavy craft brews popular now.

Though today’s brewers consider hops a crucial ingredient in beer, it wasn't until medieval Europe that the bitter plant became a popular addition. Gruit ales were flavored with a mix of herbs, the old-fashioned way to bitter a brew before hops surpassed it between the 11th and 16th centuries.  Until then, hops were just "one of the bazillion things you could put in a beer," brewer Butch Heilshorn told Gastropod. Heilshorn is one of the few brewers in America experimenting with “gruits,” as hop-free beers are called. 

For this episode, Gastropod visited Earth Eagle Brewings, the Portsmouth, New Hampshire-based brewery Heilshorn co-founded in 2012, to learn how the future of beer might lie in its long-forgotten past.

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Beer Alcohol Food

Know Before You Go

If you’re over 21, you too can taste Butch Heilshorn’s surprisingly tasty creations at Earth Eagle Brewings, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. To find a gruit in your neighborhood, check out International Gruit Day, held at bars and breweries around the world every February 1.

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Gastropod

Edited By

Meg, funerealephemera

  • Meg
  • funerealephemera

Published

November 13, 2016

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  • eartheaglebrewings.com
  • http://www.gruitday.com/
Earth Eagle Brewings
165 High St
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
United States
43.079052, -70.759492
Visit Website
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