Spruce Beer, Very Excellent
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the liquid
Boil 3 gallons of water and pour it into a 6-gallon cask.
Boil the starch until it forms a smooth, transparent jelly.
Mix the honey into the jelly, then stir this mixture into the boiling water in the cask.
Fill the cask nearly full with the remaining cold water.
Add the essence of spruce and let the mixture cool.
Ferment and bottle
Once cooled, add the yeast and shake the cask well.
Leave it to ferment for two to three days, or longer if necessary.
Before sealing the cask, dissolve 1 oz. of isinglass in water and stir it in to clarify.
After a week, bottle the beer in stone bottles and secure the corks.
It will be ready to drink in about a week.
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
- Honey
- Provides the fermentable sugar that yeast turns into alcohol and carbonation.
- Starch
- Thickens the boiled liquid into a smooth jelly that helps the honey blend evenly.
- Yeast
- Ferments the sugars, producing alcohol and carbon dioxide that carbonate the beer.
- Essence of spruce
- Adds the characteristic resinous, aromatic flavour of the beer.
The step that matters
Adding the yeast after cooling. Yeast is killed or stressed by hot liquid, so the mixture must be cool before the yeast goes in to ferment properly.
“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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