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Drink

Spruce Beer

A fermented beverage made with spruce essence, molasses, water, 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

Prepare 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.

Ferment

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

  2. Roll the cask or shake it well.

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

Bottle

  1. When fermentation subsides, bottle it or put it in stone jars and cork well.

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

Molasses
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments, and much of the beer's dark flavour.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, making the drink fizzy.
Essence of spruce
Adds the characteristic resinous, aromatic spruce flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the yeast when the mixture is cool. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the wort must be cool enough for the yeast to survive and start fermenting. Adding it too early can stop fermentation before it begins.

“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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