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Drink

Brown Spruce Beer

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Brown Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Pour 8 gallons of cold water into a barrel.

  2. Boil 8 gallons of water and add it to the barrel.

  3. Stir in 12 pounds of treacle and ½ pound of essence of spruce.

  4. Once slightly cooled, add ½ pint of ale yeast and stir well.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Leave the mixture with the bung out for 2-3 days.

  2. Bottle the liquor.

  3. Cork the bottles well.

  4. Let it rest for 2 weeks.

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

Treacle
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments and gives the beer its dark, sweet flavour.
Essence of spruce
Supplies the characteristic resinous, piney aroma that defines the beer.
Ale yeast
Ferments the sugars into alcohol and carbonation during the rest.

The step that matters

Cooling before adding the yeast. Yeast is killed by very hot liquid, so the mixture should be only slightly cooled before the yeast goes in. Adding it too hot can stop fermentation before it starts.

“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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