A gruit ale is a beer brewed with spices and herbs instead of hops. It is a beer time machine since it dates back to 700-1700 AD where hops were an unknown ingredient to beer brewing. When brewers began using hops, gruits lost a lot of appeal and faded away over time. Luckily with the emergence of craft breweries, some have brought this awesome style back from the dead! We opted for using Saffron as our main spice as well as bitter orange to give a sweet and tangy flavour as well as a bit of bitterness. Saffron is the most expensive spice in the world and it takes up to 75,000 of these hand-picked filaments to produce one pound! That's just crazy! Gruits are very fragile compared to their hoped beer counterpart because hops are a natural preservative. As such, they are best enjoyed fresh and do not age well.