Chirstmas Ale Using Fresh Spruce Tips

[ScrewyBrewer]

I bought a pound of fresh cut organically grown spruce tips from Edwards Hop Farm in New Jersey. It was a bit of an impulse buy on a trip to their farm last month. I paid $20 for the spruce tips and now feel obligated to brew something with them. Believe it or not, I've never brewed a Christmas Ale let alone a beer using spruce tips before.

Can anyone recommend a recipe, or has anyone ever brewed with spruce tips before? I'm planning to brew a batch in 5 days and would appreciate any information or advise you can offer.

[Beer-lord]

Hey Vince, I admire your creativity. I'm not a Christmas beer kind of guy but have seen it in some of the many forums I read for years. I think it's a few years old but check out the AHA (American Homebrewers Assn) forum and search there for Spruce beers.
And, I've heard it mentioned on youtube from a guy in Norway that he liked the beer that Alaskan Brewing puts out every year so maybe you can google them and ask about their recipe. Perhaps they discuss it on their website.

Good luck!
EDIT: I went and looked and here's their website on their Spruce IPA.
https://alaskanbeer.com/our-beers/spruce-ipa/

[ScrewyBrewer]

Awesome thanks Paul I'll check it out.

[John Sand]

Never used spruce, I have brewed Christmas beer, and spiced autumn beers. I generally try to be conservative with spices, I think the same would be true of spruce. I'm planning a Christmas beer right now, some spice will go in at flame out, I'll add to the keg if necessary using a steep, tea or tincture.

[mashani]

A very authentic way to use Juniper fronds (which as far as I could say is same difference to what you have) is to use them to line your mash tun bottom and filter the mash through them on the way to your pot.

If you want to know all about beers brewed with Juniper I suggest checking out LarsBlog. It will give you ideas.

http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/

[HerbMeowing]

I've brewed with fresh Norway spruce tips harvested in May.
What I learned: a little goes a long way. Flavor improved with age (12 - 16wks in bottle)

Batch size: 2.5G
one pint tips @ 15' (clipped them to size to fill a pint container)
0.5 oz tips @ 5'
Hops: Northern Brewer (60', 30', 20', 10')
Handful of juniper berries @ 0'
Grist: 2-row ... 20L ... white wheat
Mash: 148°F

On re-brew ... would reduce the spruce additions by half

[mashani]

If used in the mash tun as a filter you can probably use a good bit more. Boiling them is something that the people who use stuff like that the most in the entire world (Nordic farmhouse brewers) would rarely do. Again, I suggest reading a lot of Larsblog.

Even using Juniper berries on their own (which most of those farmhouse brewers wouldn't do), I learned to use them to create a juniper flavored mash infusion, most or all of the berries in the mash vs. in the boil. If in the boil, sparingly near the end. Comes out nice that way.

[ScrewyBrewer]

Well, I did brew my Spruce Tip Amber Ale on Sunday. In the end, I wound up steeping a pound of Spruce tips in 2 gallons of boiled water. The next day after removing the Spruce tips I reduced the 'tea' down to 800ml of 'essence' which I added to the boil 15 minutes before flameout. The OG of the 5-gallon batch was 1.087 and had a nice amber color. It is fermenting away with SafeAle US-05 now. In a few weeks, I'll let you know how it tastes.