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Spruce Beer

A fermented beverage made from treacle, water, spruce essence, and optional ginger, allspice, hops, or spruce fir sprigs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Spruce Beer

Why it works: Ginger and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,620 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Dissolve the treacle in the water.

  2. Strain the mixture into a cask.

  3. Add the cold water and essence of spruce to the cask.

  4. Keep the cask in a warm place until the mixture is warm to the touch.

Ferment

  1. Stir in the fresh yeast.

  2. Leave the mixture for 1–2 days until fermentation ceases.

  3. Bung the cask closely.

Bottle and flavour

  1. Bottle the beer the following day.

  2. Boil the ginger, allspice, and hops in a small amount of the mixture.

  3. Add the boiled mixture back to the cask.

  4. Boil the spruce fir sprigs in some of the mixture.

  5. Use the boiled spruce mixture instead of the essence.

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

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Ginger + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,620 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + hopstop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Allspice + hopstop 69% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together0 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments, giving sweetness and body to the beer.
Fresh yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, which makes the beer fizz.
Essence of spruce
Supplies the resinous spruce aroma and flavour that defines the beer.

The step that matters

Wait until fermentation ceases before bottling. Bottling while the yeast is still active can trap excess carbon dioxide, so bottles may build up pressure and burst. Waiting until fermentation stops makes the beer stable and carbonation predictable.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (allspice, hops):

  1. Clovefits better
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Gingerthe original
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against allspice, hops. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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