Spruce On Tap - The spruce is loose!

Welcome to Spruce on Tap! We supply spruce tips (also known as spruce boughs) for the beer brewing community. Spruce tips are the new growth on Spruce pine trees that are harvested and used in the brewing process to enhance flavors and aromas. Take a look at what we have to offer and then try some in your next brew!

NEWS:

Spruce On Tap works with Goose Island Beer Co for a Scandinavian Treat - Gran Gås:
http://www.gooseisland.com/pages/gran_g_s/314.php

Spruce On Tap works with Pagosa Brewing Company for a Spruce Cask Ale:
http://www.facebook.com/PagosaBrewingCompany 

History and Brewing with Spruce Tips: 

Spruce tips have been used in the brewing process for hundreds of years. In fact, they were one of the main additions in beer before people learned about brewing with hops! Spruce tips add a fresh, bright aroma. The fresh, tender tips have a mellow pine scent and a crisp flavor. A number of refreshing flavors are associated with spruce-flavored beverages, ranging from floral, citrusy, and fruityto cola-like flavors to resinous and piney. This diversity in flavor mainly comes from the choice of spruce species, the season in which the needles are harvested, and the manner of preparation. Lighter, more citrus-like flavors are produced by using the bright green fresh spring growth before the new needles and twigs harden and become woody, which is right when we pick ‘em!

The fresh shoots of many spruces and pines are a natural source of vitamin C (which helps the stability of the finished beer).  Captain Cook made alcoholic sugar-based spruce beer during his sea voyages in order to prevent scurvy in his crew. Recently spruce has been used as a flavoring ingredient in commercial beer such as Alba Scots Pine Ale and Alaskan Brewing Company's Winter Ale and Wigram Brewing Company's Spruce Beer, which is based on Captain Cooks first beer brewed in New Zealand in 1773.

Alcoholic spruce beer was common in the colonial United States and eastern Canada. See our recipe from 1796 in the recipes section (though it is not exactly beer)! The Daily Order for the Highland Regiment in North America (early to mid 1800’s) stipulated that: "Spruce beer is to be brewed for the health and conveniency of the troops which will be served at prime cost. Five quarts of molasses will be put into every barrel of Spruce Beer. Each gallon will cost nearly three coppers."

Our Harvesting Process and Ethics: At Spruce On Tap we love brewing, but we love trees too. We are adamant about making sure the trees are not over harvested and that the spruce tips are only harvested in areas where the spruce tree is thriving. We recognize that trees are the source of our fresh air and they are beautiful to boot, and we strive to protect them. All spruce tips are Wild Harvested in primarily the San Juan Mountain Range of southern Colorado, in the San Juan National Forest. We harvest both Colorado Blue Spruce tips and Engelmann Spruce tips. We harvest the spruce tips when they first begin to emerge from their brown, papery casings each spring. At this stage they are very tender and have the brightest flavor with slight amounts of resin and citrus.

Storage & Preservation: We harvest the spruce tips fresh off the tree and vacuum pack them, then we freeze them the same day. With this process we can easily get them to last a year and still provide nice aroma and flavor. If you plan to order some but not use them all for a brew right away, you can re-pack what you don’t use and re-freeze it. If you can vacuum seal it that would be best, but even in a zip lock bag they should last several months frozen. Just don't let them get hot! Think of them like spinach. Once they are thawed out they will only last a few days and every day the flavor and aroma profile will decrease. 

About the Spruce Trees:

Colorado Blue Spruce – Native to Colorado. 150-200 years (though some can reach 600 years). Medium to high elevations. The state tree of Colorado. Also known as Blue Spruce or Silver Spruce.

Engelmann Spruce – Native to Colorado. 250-500 years. Medium to high elevations. One of the taller of the high elevation conifers. They can survive in cold temperatures and deep snow pack at timberline (normally around 11,500 ft. around these parts). Produces cones at 25-50 years.

Other Uses – Food & Medicine - The leaves and branches, or the essential oils, can be used to brew spruce beer! (Go figure…) Also, the tips from the needles can be used to make spruce tip syrup. Native Americans in New England used the sap to make a gum which was used for various reasons, and which was the basis of the first commercial production of chewing gum. In survival situations spruce needles can be directly ingested or boiled into a tea. This replaces large amounts of vitamin C. Also, water is stored in a spruce's needles, providing an alternative means of hydration. Spruce tip tea has long been used by indigenous peoples to soothe coughs and sore throats, and to alleviate lung congestion. Reports say that spruce can be used as a preventative measure for scurvy in an environment where meat is the only prominent food source. Although there are many known uses for spruce, always consult a tree-eating expert before scarfing down wicked huge helpings of pine. 

About Us:  Spruce on Tap was started by homebrewers in Colorado. We have spruce trees everywhere, we have good beer everywhere and we have homebrew enthusiasts everywhere. It just made sense to offer spruce tips when we learned that others around the nation love to experiment as much as we do, but they don’t have access to spruce tips. So here we are, at your service!

Recipe Ideas:  NOTE – Everyone’s tastes are different (and we are glad for that). Some people are very sensitive to the pine flavor that spruce tips add to a beer and other people are not as sensitive to it. We always recommend starting light on your first batch. Then you know what to expect. After that, start ramping up on future batches if so desired. Fresh spruce tips may have high levels of undesirable resins and tannins when boiled too long.  We normally add the spruce to the last 15 min of the boil (or less).  The aromatic quality of the spruce is most present with this process.

PLEASE NOTE - Differing times of harvest, kinds of trees, age of tips, length of storage, etc. all contribute to the potency of the spruce tips. When you open your package, if they smell super strong then they probably are and can use a little less. If there is not a lot of aroma you may consider using more in the recipe.

Those adventurous brewers can go old-school and replace all hop additions with spruce tips – a true old skool spruce beer! But be careful, replacing hop additions with spruce additions (especially the longer boil times) can make one whopper of a tanic beer.

2 Tbs Spruce Essence   =    Approximately 4 oz spruce tips

Spruce Juice Pale Ale (Our own family recipe, which has won ribbons!):

(5 Gallons – Mash Extract)

1.5 lb Light Dry Malt Extract

2.75 lb Pale Malt Liquid Extract

2 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row)

1 lb Munich Malt – 10L (Great Western)

½ lb Carapils

¼ lb Caramel / Crystal Malt – 60L

1 oz New Zealand Hallertauer (8.5% - 60 minutes)

.5 oz Cascade (8.6% - 20 minutes)

4 to 8 oz Spruce Tips (15 minutes - less for subtle flavor, more for strong flavor)

1 tsp Irish Moss (15 minutes)

1 oz New Zealand Hallertauer (8.5% - 5 minutes)

Ale Yeast

(priming sugar for bottling)

Mash crushed grains at 150 degrees for one hour. Remove grains and bring to a boil. Cut heat and add extracts. Bring back to a boil and start hop additions. Cool wort in a fermenter and pitch yeast. Rack to secondary after primary fermentation has slowed (usually 3-5 days). Condition in secondary for two weeks before bottling or kegging.

***************************************

Pagosa Brewing Co (Limited hints on how they made the Cask Ale):

10 gallon Firken of new IPA (pulled directly from primary) with fresh wort added for priming
1/2 lb of frozen spruce tips added to firken + 1lb cascade hops  

Nice!

***************************************

Another Spruce Recipe - 10 Gallon All Grain:

****************************************

Kumdis Island Spruce Beer:

(5 Gallons - Taken with permission from Charlie Papazian’s book The Complete Joy of Home Brewing, where you can find even more spruce recipes and TONS of other great brewing info. His book is highly recommended…)

6.6 lbs Briess CBW traditional dark malt extract syrup

4 oz Spruce Tips

2 oz Vanguard or Hallertauer hops (Boiling – 10 HBU)

American Ale Type Yeast

¾ c. corn sugar or 1 ¼ c. Dry malt extract (for bottling)

OG – 1.046 – 1.050

FG – 1.010 – 1.014

Bitterness – 32 IBU; Color 20 SRM

Add the malt extracts,  spruce tips and boiling hops to 1.5 gallons of water and boil for 60 minutes. Strain, sparge and transfer immediately to 2 gallons of cold water in the fermenter. Top off with additional water to make five gallons. Add the yeast when cool and ferment to completion. Bottle when fermentation is complete.

*****************************************

Alcoholic spruce beer was common in the colonial United States and eastern Canada, made from red or black spruce.  An American recipe from 1796 (though not exactly beer) states:

Take four ounces of hops, let them boil half an hour in one gallon of water, strain the hop water then add sixteen gallons of warm water, two gallons of molasses, eight ounces of essence of spruce, dissolved in one quart of water, put it in a clean cask, then shake it well together, add half a pint of emptins (brewer’s yeast), then let it stand and work one week, if very warm weather less time will do, when it is drawn off to bottle, add one spoonful of molasses to every bottle.