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

FAQs

How much spruce tips to add to beer? ›

If you love the aroma and just want to bury your face in it, use the full recommended amount! 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.

Today Sitka spruce, native to the northwest coast of North America, tends to be favored, although other species of spruce have also been used. Lighter, more citrus-like flavors are produced by using the bright green fresh spring growth before the new needles and twigs harden and become woody.

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.”

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.

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.

Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a lidded pot, stirring to make sure all the sugar is absorbed. When it hits a boil, turn off the heat. Stir in the spruce tips, cover the pot and leave to cool. The longer you steep the syrup, the stronger spruce flavor you'll get.

Spruce tips are the new growth of the trees each year and are most notably antiseptic, antimicrobial and an incredible source of vitamin C. After a long winter, they offer an immune boost and a fresh, lemony flavor that wakes you up from your hibernation slumber.

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. When the British garrison was stationed in Halifax, each soldier had a ration of 2 quarts per man per day.

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.

What is spruce beer used for? ›

"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.

This hearty ale is a showcase for a traditional yet seldom used brewing ingredient: spruce tips. Harvested at their tender, ripe, bright green peak in Downer State Forest, Vermont, these spruce tips impart citrus, pine, spice, herbal and earthy notes.

The tips of all pine trees are edible, but be sure not to confuse them with the poisonous yew tree. I tend to go for Norway spruce or Sitka spruce just because it's plentiful here.

Suggested use rates are 0.01% to 0.02% (w/v) of terpenes to beer.

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.)