After several years of experimenting with floral farmhouse ales and even a few sour ales and ancient brews, I wanted to finally make a truly wild beer with hyper-local ingredients. No stranger to foraging herbs, I did my research and created a mixture that would honour the historical gruit recipe. What's more, I decided to brew this on International Gruit Day, celebrating Nature's herbal gifts and all the historical brews that came before it. With every batch I try to capture the terroir of the area from which I forage the herbs and source the honey, such as the Bavarian Alpine meadows of my first batch or the rural landscape at the foothills of the Țarcu Mountains of Romania for my second batch.

For fermentation I always use a wild yeast culture that I personally collect from the area whose terroir I try to capture and express. These high-attenuation yeasts tend to ferment cleanly, leaving a smooth mouthfeel despite the lack of residual sugars, while also bringing their own floral flavors and sometimes even a bit of funk.

When fermentation is nearly done, I add a blend of flowers and wildflower honey, which not only gives the yeast a bump in sugars but it also gives the finished beer a final floral burst and a slight perceived sweetness. For this series I also like to use a single malt, ideally an heirloom variety, which allows the resulting beer to pour a bright golden color, with an underlying honey flavor and intense floral aromatics reminiscent of late spring meadows where everything is in bloom.