Many beer drinkers consider witbier to be a throwback style, a tribute to the days when beer wasn't narrowly defined by the
Reinheitsgebot as the synthesis of malt, hops, yeast, and water. In the Middle Ages beer was more commonly understood as a local concoction of grains intended for consumption on premises, rather than distribution, and often contained unmalted ingredients like wheat berries available close to home. But spiced beers were also once endemic to European brewing traditions, largely thanks to the gruit trade and the institution that controlled it: the Catholic Church.
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| The Church of the Middle Ages didn't just influence Western thought and political systems. It also helped shape its beer. |
So, about gruit. Back before humans invented brewing chemistry they used herbal concoctions to try and balance the typically cloying nature of beverages fermented with grains. The delightful mixture included exotic sounding herbs like bog myrtle, sweet gale, yarrow, and wormwood. Brewers used gruit and not hops to bitter and flavor beer. Gruit was the predecessor of today's spiced beers.
As the Catholic Church consolidated its economic control over feudal Europe, it viewed the gruit trade as an opportunity to keep nobility in check. This made sense. Nobles needed the peasantry to be hydrated, satiated, happy, and productive. The answer came through beer - and if the Church controlled the purse strings on one of its main ingredients, it held sway over the nobility as well.
The Church designated merchants to tax gruit in several of Europe's largest ports. Take Bruges, for example. The Florentine Medicis financed the development of Bruges to facilitate Low Country textiles into Italy, but gruit quickly became the city's biggest business. Bruges was literally a city run on gruit, with the wealthiest family controlling the city's prime real estate. As a quid pro quo, the Catholic Church gave him exclusive access to the local cathedral. The gruit merchant's bedroom actually opened into a private balcony overlooking the altar!
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| Gruit merchants in Bruges loaded their bounty onto ships in these canals for points all over Northern Europe. |
The rise of absolute monarchies, princely states, and Protestantism conspired to eliminate gruit in many brewing hot spots. The English crown began taxing hops in place of gruit to give the crown more complete control over the brewing industry. Bavaria famously designated the Reinheitsgebot with similar intentions. Some other German states didn't adopt the Reinheitsgebot in full until unification, but chose hops over gruit in the throes of the Protestant Reformation.
That left tiny Belgium, which together with the Netherlands came under the control of Charles V, the very Catholic ruler of Spain. Belgian brewers also began using hops as bittering agents, but without any political pressure against the continued use of spice additions, the tradition of gruit went on in some local styles. Today's wit reflects the continued adherence to the practice long after German and British brewers abandoned it.
But those spices changed as the Dutch explored the world. Brewers began to use citrus and spice additions completely foreign to Belgium's oceanic climate. That story will come in part three. Might be a while, as a business trip has derailed my blogging plans, but stay tuned!
