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

FAQs

How much spruce tips for 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.

Use Like Hops

You can use spruce tips much like you would use any hop. Add fresh tips, and possibly small cut twigs and branches to pickup more of the earthy bitter resin, to different parts of your boil. Then add fresh spruce tips only, to the end of the boil for aroma additions.

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 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. They can be chopped and added to salads, soups, and smoothies.

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.

Spruce tips can be eaten in a variety of ways from raw to a syrup. Many of the best recipes I have found are German. Recipes like spruce tip salads and chocolate covered spruce tips. My youngest daughter, Mia, likes to simply snack on them straight from the trees.

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.

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. Check out food ideas below! Prepare as a tea: Pour 8 oz of boiling water over 1/2oz of spruce. Cover and steep 3-4 minutes, strain, and serve.

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 to harvest spruce tips for beer? ›

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.

Alaskan Brewing made a Spruce IPA last year. Piney and hoppy, a rather good combination IMHO. I would recommend this one, especially if you like “dank and piney” in your beer. The Alaskan Brewery make Spruce IPA which has Sitka Spruce tips added for flavor.

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 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.

So now, you know you need 0.5 mL of flavoring per ounce (113 mL) of beer left.

An average five gallon batch grain bill (total amount of grain to be used) with pre-boil gravity of 1.035 will call for ten pounds of grain. Each pound of grain will absorb approximately 15 ounces of water.

An infusion can be made from any of the edible conifer tips by pouring boiling water over chopped or mashed needles and tips and allowing it to steep for 10 minutes or so. We also make a mixed conifer syrup with sugar, and use it to make soda by adding the syrup to seltzer.