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Spruce Beer

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 treacle in 8 gallons of water.

  2. Strain the mixture into a cask.

  3. Add 8 gallons of cold water and essence of spruce.

  4. For flavor, boil bruised ginger, allspice, and hops in a small amount of the liquor, then add to the rest.

Ferment and bottle

  1. When the mixture is warm, stir in fresh yeast.

  2. Leave in a warm place for 1-2 days until fermentation ceases.

  3. Bung it up closely.

  4. Bottle the beer the following day; it can be used in a week.

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 into alcohol and carbonation.
Fresh yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide for the beer.
Essence of spruce
Gives the beer its characteristic resinous, piney aroma and flavor.
Hops
Adds bitterness and aroma that balance the sweetness of the treacle.

The step that matters

Leave in a warm place until fermentation ceases. Yeast works best within a warm range; if the mixture is too cold, fermentation stalls, and if it is left too long, the beer can over-carbonate. Stopping at the point fermentation ceases keeps the finished beer stable.

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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