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Another Way to Make Spruce Beer

A fermented beverage made from water, treacle, ginger, allspice, hops, spruce essence, 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

Make the liquid

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

  2. Dissolve the treacle and essence of spruce in a bucketful of the boiled liquid.

Ferment

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

  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, and adds sweetness and dark color.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that gives the beer its character.
Hops
Add bitterness that balances the sweetness and help preserve the beer.
Essence of spruce
Gives the beer its distinctive resinous, aromatic flavor.

The step that matters

Sealing the cask. Seal the cask only after fermentation has truly stopped. Sealing too early can trap carbon dioxide and build pressure, while sealing too late exposes the beer to air, which can spoil it.

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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