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Drink

Spruce Beer, Common

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Spruce Beer, Common

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. In a cask, combine 4 gallons of cold water with 4 gallons of boiling water.

  2. Add the molasses and essence of spruce to the mixture.

Ferment

  1. Once the heat is reduced to warm, stir in the yeast.

  2. Shake the barrel and leave it with the bung out for two days.

Bottle and store

  1. Bottle immediately using strong quart bottles, wiring down the corks securely.

  2. Store the bottles in dry sawdust or sand.

  3. After two to three weeks, the beer will be ready to drink.

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.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Molasses
Provides sugars that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and the carbonation that makes the beer fizzy.
Essence of spruce
Adds the characteristic resinous, aromatic flavor of the beer.

The step that matters

Stir in the yeast once the liquid is warm, not hot. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture must cool to warm before adding it. Adding yeast too early can stop fermentation before it starts, and the beer will not carbonate or develop alcohol properly.

“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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