Name: Spruce Beer
Ingredients: 7 pounds molasses; 4 gallons boiling water; 4 gallons cold water; 3 tablespoons spruce essence; 3 tablespoons yeast or ½ pint toddy

Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

Mix molasses in boiling and cold water.
Add spruce essence and whisk well.

Ferment and bottle

Stir in yeast or toddy.
Transfer to a cask and roll it.
Bottle when fermentation stops, secure with wire or tie, and store in a cool cellar.

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

Molasses: Provides the sugar that yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Spruce essence: Supplies the resinous, aromatic flavour that defines the beer.
Yeast or toddy: Starts fermentation, converting sugars into 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.