Sounding more like the tree-character Groot in The Guardians of the Galaxy, gruit beer was made up of a combination of roots, flowers and herbs back in Europe’s Medieval period.

Now, brewers on both sides of the Atlantic and Israel are either seeking to duplicate gruit, or to take the best of the style and add locally obtained botanicals to their beer to provide balance to hops.

“Think of it as 5G, or thousands of colors on an artist’s pallet,” Robert Finkel, founder and “rootmaster” at Chicago’s Forbidden Root brewery, explains. “There are so many interesting herbs, roots, flowers, seeds, fruits, leaves, stems, and honeys, that it gives us so much more to work with to integrate with beautiful hops.”

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