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Drink

Spruce Beer

A fermented beverage made from water, spruce essence, molasses, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Spruce Beer

Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Pour 8 gallons of cold water into a barrel.

  2. Add 8 gallons of boiling water.

  3. Stir in 6 tablespoons of essence of spruce and 16 pounds of molasses.

  4. When the mixture is sufficiently cool, add ½ pint of yeast.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Roll the cask or shake it well.

  2. Keep it in a warm place for 2 days with the bung open.

  3. Once fermentation has subsided, bottle it or transfer it to stone jars and cork them.

  4. It will be ready to use in a week.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Yeast
Ferments the sugars in the molasses, producing carbonation and alcohol that give the beer its body.
Molasses
Supplies the fermentable sugar that feeds the yeast and gives the beer its dark, rich sweetness.
Essence of spruce
Provides the resinous, aromatic flavour that defines spruce beer.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast while the mixture is still warm. Yeast is killed by high heat, so the mixture must be cool enough before the yeast goes in, or fermentation may fail.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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