Spruce Beer Homebrew Recipe (made with spruce tips) (2024)

FAQs

How to use spruce tips in beer? ›

We treat spruce tips pretty much like hops, adding them at the beginning, middle and end of the boil. We save half of the spruce tips for the final addition and divide the rest into the first and second additions.

Fermented Spruce Tip Syrup

To make your syrup ferment, add ½ cup (4 oz) water to the basic proportions below, or just enough water so that the spruce tips are just barely covered with liquid from the get-go. Anywhere from ⅓ to ½ cup of water will do the trick.

According to Devaris, one quart of uncompressed spruce tips for a five-gallon batch (one liter for 20 liters) gives subtle background flavor, and the amount can be doubled for barley wines. These tips are documented in Gordon Strong's book Brewing Better Beers (Brewers Publications 2011, pages 214–217).

Typically harvested in the spring, spruce tips are said to contribute a number of characteristics to beer ranging from citrus and floral to cinnamon and pine, making it a nice compliment to many styles.

This is an easy tip to remember: on pine trees, needles are attached and attached to the branches in clusters; on spruce trees, needles are attached individually. A longleaf pine – which you can tell is a pine because its needles are attached in bundles.

Place the spruce tips in the clean glass jar. Pour the honey over the spruce tips. (If the honey is thick and difficult to pour, warm slightly in a sauce pan to loosen). Allow the honey to infuse for a couple weeks.

They are full of vitamin C for immune system strengthening, vitamin A for healthy organ function, magnesium and potassium, and have always been used by indigenous tribes for coughs, colds and sore throats.

Spruce tips can be eaten raw or blended in dishes in which you would like to increase the acidity and brightness, such as sauces or marinades for chicken, pork, tofu or white beans. You can use spruce tips in tea or a tincture, steep them in vinegar or syrup or blend them in salt or seasoning mixes.

Spruce or other evergreens have sometimes been used as a flavoring ingredient in beer, such as Alba Scots Pine Ale, the Alaskan Brewing Company's Winter Ale, Beau's Brewery's Spruce Moose Pale Ale, and Yards Brewing Company's Poor Richard's Tavern Spruce.

It was a joy to drink. It also was 7.5% alcohol content, so unwise to drink too many… I had never heard of Spruce Beer previously and was amazed to find it has a rich local history.

What are the benefits of spruce beer? ›

Both sailors and colonists knew spruce beer for it's value in preventing scurvy, and also drank it because it was often reliably cleaner than available drinking water. Me, I just wanted to know what spruce beer would taste like because I'm utterly enchanted by the flavor of spruce.

While all spruce tips are edible, I find blue spruce to be the most intense flavor. Spruce tips can be enjoyed raw, cooked into any dish and used as you might rosemary because their flavor profile is similar. I think that this flavor would pair well with white gamey meat and chicken.

Spruce Tip Blonde Ale:

Enjoy a fresh glass of our signature brew, Skagway Brewing Company's Spruce Tip Blonde Ale. The sweet citrus flavor and smooth finish are created using hydroelectric power to combine the flavors of Skagway's crystal-clear untreated water with hand-picked locally sourced spruce tips.

Certain Indigenous peoples of North America used the drink as a cure for scurvy during the winter months when fresh fruits were not available, as the fresh shoots of many spruces and pines are a natural source of vitamin C.

Spruce tip beer is, in one form or another, a very old style of beer. Back in Colonial times, hops were rare, so the colonists made a beer with molasses and used spruce or fir tips in place of the hops.