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

FAQs

How much spruce tips in beer? ›

COMMERCIAL BREWERIES - For commercial breweries we are seeing most people use 1-2lbs per BBL of spruce depending on the beer style for subtle flavor (juniper and other ingredients will have different dosage amounts.

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.

Lots of piney, resinous notes, which many craft beer fans have come to expect from New World hops. As one online rater put it in a review of Ballast Point's Spruce Tip Sculpin: “Like regular Sculpin, but more dank.”

Spruce beer is a beverage flavored with the buds, needles, or essence of spruce trees. Spruce beer can refer to either alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages. A number of flavors are associated with spruce-flavored beverages, ranging from floral, citrus, and fruity, to cola-like flavors to resinous and piney.

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.

Water Your Finished Spruce Tip Pot

Place your pot where you want it and water to moisten the soil until it freezes. Fresh evergreens will continue to take up water like a fresh Christmas tree. Watering your pot will keep it fresh all season.

If you have a few bags of spruce tips in the freezer, now is the time to use them before the harvesting season begins again. Two of the best ways to freeze spruce tips is to bag them up in plastic freezer baggies or to vacuum seal them and then freeze. Spruce tips can last up to one year.

First Nations and early settlers of Quebec brewed vitamin-C-filled spruce beer prior to the 1700s to combat kidney illnesses, stomach upset and scurvy. It was considered a poor man's drink until Swedish explorer Pehr Kalm brought news to Europe that the strange recipe was indeed making people healthier.

"Ancient Scandinavians and their Viking descendants brewed beer from young shoots of Norway spruce, drinking the beer for strength in battle, for fertility and to prevent scurvy on long sea voyages," according to the second edition of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.

Spruce tips can be eaten raw, cooked, or dried and powdered like a spice/flavoring. We add them raw to salads, use them to flavor desserts, and use the powder to bring unique color and flavor to dishes.

Who makes a spruce tip beer? ›

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.

Depending on the maker, it typically has a sharper flavor than most pop beverages, with an acquired taste that's been described as a “liquefied Christmas tree.” The origins of spruce beer in North America trace back to the First Nations peoples who boiled the coniferous boughs for their medicinal benefits.

First developed by Canada's indigenous peoples, spruce beer was commonly used to prevent scurvy, even by French navigator Jacques Cartier.

So now, you know you need 0.5 mL of flavoring per ounce (113 mL) of beer left. If you had 5 gallons (19 L) remaining (640 oz./19,000 mL), you'd need 320 mL (10.8 fl. oz.)

Don't Over Prime!

When bottling I typically do 3.5 ounces of corn sugar (dextrose) by weight for 5 gallons. This yields about 2.1 volumes of carbonation, which is plenty. Over carbonation leads to a lot of problems, like swollen caps, exploding bottles, and a really annoying time trying to pour foamy beer.

For one drink, grab your favorite pint glass and first add a few drops of food coloring. Depending on how vibrant you want your brew, you may want to add at least 2-3 drops per glass.

You will need equal parts clean, dry tips to maple syrup (or other medium.) Place the tips in a sterilized glass jar, then pour in the syrup. Make sure that it completely covers the needles. Run a clean, sterile, non-metal utensil through the mixture to dislodge any air bubbles.