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

FAQs

How to use spruce tips in beer? ›

Fresh spruce tips can be infused in boiling water or wort without the fear of sharp flavors. Alaskan homebrewer Pete Devaris recommends boiling the fresh spruce tips in the wort for one hour.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

Are spruce tips safe to eat? ›

Spruce tips have a range of flavors depending on their stage of maturity: herbal, fruity, citrus, resinous. They play well with both sweet and savory dishes. All spruce varieties (from the pine or Pinaceae family) are edible.

Nutritional Value

Spruce tips are a source of vitamin A to maintain healthy organ functioning, potassium to balance fluid levels within the body, and vitamin C to strengthen the immune system while reducing inflammation.

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.

Use Like Hops

Then add fresh spruce tips only, to the end of the boil for aroma additions.

The health benefits arose from the fact that spruce tips, especially the new growth, contain up to 50 mg of vitamin C per 100 grams. The native people of eastern Canada also prevented scurvy by chewing the spruce tree's inner bark and sticky gum.

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. This is not that beer.