Spruce Tip Beer Recipe - Brewing Beer with Spruce or Fir (2024)

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Spruce tip beer is, in one form or another, a very old style of beer. Back in Colonial times, hops were rare, so the colonists made a beer with molasses and used spruce or fir tips in place of the hops. This is not that beer.

This is a modern interpretation of a spruce or fir tip beer that is a rich amber ale with enough hops to give it backbone — and lots of fir tips, which lend a balsamic, citrusy flavor.

It is a wonderful beer to drink in a tulip glass, as you get all those amazing aromas full on; it’s like drinking with Vikings in the Northwoods.

What is a spruce tip? The brand new springtime growth of spruce, fir, redwoods, pines and other conifer trees is a pretty pale green. At first they are little compressed bullet-like structures, but as they mature they begin to look just like older growth, only lighter in color. You can use them at any point, and can even use older growth if you must, but the older the needles get the less citrusy and more turpentine-like they become.

Note that when I say springtime, I mean spring where the tree is. Where I live in Northern California, I can get the new growth of fir trees all the way into August, depending on how high I go. I picked some lovely Engelmann spruce tips in Arizona in late July. My advice is to gather a lot, vacuum seal them and freeze so you can make this beer all year ’round.

As for the foraging part, taste test many different trees, as each one will be slightly different. Then, when you find one you like, pick from that one — but not too much, as you don’t want to hurt the tree. And never, ever pick the growing tops of small trees. You will stunt them.

My main advice with this recipe is to age the beer a month or more in the bottles. It starts out harsh and bitter, but mellows wonderfully after a month and will continue to smooth out over time.

To make a fir tip or spruce tip ale, you need to be set up for brewing. If you are, you’re good to go. If you’re not, there is substantial equipment you really do need to do this right. At a minimum, you will need:

• A large pot, or several slightly smaller ones. I used a regular stockpot plus another soup pot before I got a proper brewing kettle.
• A thermometer. I highly recommend a laser thermometer. I use this one.
• A gram scale. Yep, precision matters in beer making. This is the scale I use.
• Something to ferment in. I prefer glass carboys, which are large jugs, but some people prefer buckets.
• An airlock. You need to keep air off the fermenting beer at the same time you let CO2 escape. The airlock does the trick.
• A strainer. A fine-meshed strainer removes debris, called trub, and the stray bits of seasoning and hops.
• Sanitizer. Yes, you need it. There are any number of good ones out there, but I use either Iodophor or Star-San.
• Bottles, caps and a capper, or a kegging system.

And, of course, you need malt and hops and yeast. Your nearest homebrew store will have all of this stuff, or you can buy it online.

I chose to make the beer rather dark because that’s what I wanted. But if you would rather make this a pale ale, add the extracts late in the process (they darken as they boil) or just go with a lighter grain bill. I chose the Northern Brewer and Saaz hops because I wanted something to play backup to the spruce tips, and because Northern Brewer’s flavor is pretty piney to begin with. They play nice together.

Here are the estimated stats on this recipe:

• Estimated Alcohol by Volume (ABV): 6%
• IBUs: 52, but the spruce tips will add hoplike bitterness and aromas to this
• Original Gravity and Final Gravity: 1.064, going down to 1.018