Can Gradle buildTypes be used for non-android projects?

Since Gradle has gained popularity among Android developers, and since the gradle-android plugin gets a lot of development, the build system is now quite easy to use and offers a lot of functionality for developing Android apps.

My question is, can these sweet things also be used when creating a pure java (i.e. non-android) project? Things like buildType make sense in a non-android context too.

I am used to using Gradle, but I need to do a clean Java project and I want to improve my Gradle knowledge (it is a little more complicated when using it) and I do not want to go into another assembly as maven or ant.