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Drink

Spruce Beer

A fermented beverage made by boiling water, treacle, ginger, spruce fir, and yeast.

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

Spruce Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the wort

  1. Boil water, treacle, and ginger together for 30 minutes.

  2. Add spruce fir and boil for 5 more minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. Let it cool to milk-warm, then pour into a cask.

Ferment and bottle

  1. Stir in the yeast well.

  2. After 1-2 days of fermentation, seal the cask.

  3. Bottle the beer the next day; it's ready to use 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

What each ingredient does

Treacle
Provides the sugar that the yeast ferments into alcohol and carbonation.
Yeast
Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that carbonates the beer.
Spruce fir
Adds resinous, aromatic flavour to the beer.
Ginger
Adds warm, spicy aroma and a slight bite to the beer.

The step that matters

Cooling to milk-warm before adding yeast. Yeast works best at moderate warmth. If the liquid is still hot, it can kill the yeast and stop fermentation; if it is too cold, fermentation starts slowly.

“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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