Name: White Spruce Beer
Ingredients: ¾ gallon essence of spruce; 7 pounds loaf sugar; 1½ gallons hot water; cold water (to fill the cask); ¼ pound good ale yeast; small quantity of isinglass (optional)

White Spruce Beer

Ingredients

¾ gallon essence of spruce
7 pounds loaf sugar
1½ gallons hot water
cold water (to fill the cask)
¼ pound good ale yeast
small quantity of isinglass (optional)

Directions

Prepare the wort

Mix the essence of spruce, loaf sugar, and hot water together until well combined.
Transfer the mixture to a cask.
Fill the cask with cold water.

Ferment

Add the ale yeast.
Shake the cask well.
Let it work for 3 to 4 days.
Bung it up.

Bottle

Dissolve a small quantity of isinglass in warm liquid.
Add the dissolved isinglass before bottling.
Bottle the beer.

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

What each ingredient does

Essence of spruce: Provides the characteristic resinous spruce aroma and flavour of the beer.
Loaf sugar: Supplies fermentable sugar that the yeast converts into alcohol and carbonation.
Ale yeast: Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide.

“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.