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Another Way to Make Spruce Beer

A fermented beverage made with spruce, hops, ginger, allspice, treacle, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Another Way to Make Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the wort

  1. Boil the hops, ginger, and allspice together until the hops fall to the bottom.

  2. Dissolve the treacle and spruce in a bucketful of the liquor.

Ferment

  1. Strain the mixture into a cask and stir in the yeast.

  2. When fermentation ceases, seal the cask.

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

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 sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that give the beer its fizz.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the treacle.
Essence of spruce
Gives the beer its characteristic resinous, piney aroma and flavour.

The step that matters

Sealing the cask after fermentation ceases. Sealing too early can trap yeast activity and build pressure, while sealing too late lets the beer oxidise and pick up off-flavours. Waiting until fermentation has stopped keeps the sugar converted and the carbonation controlled.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ginger, hops):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, 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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