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

FAQs

How much spruce tips to add to beer? ›

We use 30 lbs. of spruce tips in a 50-barrel batch (~1.5 oz. per 5-gallon/19-L), which are meant to add a certain spiciness to the beer. We don't want that flavor to be over the top and dominate the beer.

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.

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.

Add spruce tips to salt to make spruce salt. Add spruce tips to honey for an amazing flavor combination. Boil spruce tips in water for 15 minutes (approximately 4 oz of spruce in 3 cups of water) to make a wonderful essence that can be used in making bread or other baking recipes.

Potting Your Spruce Tops:

Keep the soil moist until the ground freezes. If you put out your tree tops early in the season, before the weather is reliably cold, consider spraying them with an anti-desiccant to help seal in their moisture.

Most would describe the flavor of spruce tips as 'lemony. ' This is likely due to the presence of the terpene limonene, high organic acid, such as ascorbic acid. Vitamin C is a potent antioxidant that protects the developing spruce branch.

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.

There are different types of spruce trees, and all spruce tips are edible. When identifying spruce trees for foraging, simply look for the bright green tips emerging from branches in high-spring. Then of course, look at the needle formation and color to confirm your identification.

It's like licorice or like aniseed. Some people say it's like cherry or cinnamon.” In fact, the impact of adding spruce to your brew might not be obvious until after fermentation, Duffield says. “It's a strange one, really, because the flavors don't appear in the beer until the yeast has done its thing,” he says.

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.

Dried spruce tips have an herbaceous aroma and flavour sort of like a rosemary and lemon blend— an aromatic botanical bounty for your pantry.

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.

That is a great question. These red spruce tips you mention are not spruce tips at all. They are the immature male spruce cones of the spruce tree. They are easy to confuse with a spruce tip due to the similar size, shape, and location of growth.

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.

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.)

In short, there is no defined amount of puree to add to your beer. In practice, a suggested range 1/4 lb. puree up to 1/2 lb. puree per gallon.

In terms of a ratio, you should ideally be aiming for : 0.25-0.35 for wheats. 0.4-0.8 for the most ales. and greater than 1.0 for IPAs.