Spruce beer
 |
| This article is part of the series on |
| Canadian cuisine |
|---|
|
Beverages
Beer (Quebec, spruce) • ice cider • Newfoundland Screech • whisky • wine (British Columbia, ice wine, Ontario, Prince Edward County, Quebec) |
|
Ingredients
|
|
Styles & dishes
Bûche de Noël • butter tart • donair • figgy duff • flapper pie • fried dough • Montreal (bagel, smoked meat) • Oreilles de crisse • Peameal bacon • pierogi • Pizza-ghetti • Pouding chômeur • Poutine • St. Catherine's taffy • Tourtière |
|
Religious & ethnic
|
|
Rituals & festivals
|
 Canada portal |
Spruce beer is a beverage flavored with the buds, needles, or essence of spruce trees. Spruce beer can refer to either alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages.
A number of flavors are associated with spruce-flavored beverages, ranging from floral, citrusy, and fruity to cola-like flavors to resinous and piney. This diversity in flavor likely comes from the choice of spruce species, the season in which the needles are harvested, and the manner of preparation.
The fresh shoots of many spruces and pines are a natural source of vitamin C.[1] Captain Cook made alcoholic sugar-based spruce beer during his sea voyages in order to prevent scurvy in his crew.[2][3]
Contents |
[edit] Types
Though spruce has sometimes been used as a flavoring ingredient in beer, such as Alba Scots Pine Ale,[4] and the Alaskan Brewing Company's Winter Ale, the only beer termed "spruce beer" is Wigram Brewing Company' Spruce Beer, which is based on Captain Cook's first beer brewed in New Zealand in 1773.[5] Spruce beer the soft drink, despite its name, is - like Ginger beer and Root beer - not a type of beer.
[edit] Fermented sugar beverages
Alcoholic spruce beer may also be made from sugar and flavoring from the spruce tree. Leaves, small branches, or extracted essence of spruce are boiled with sugar and fermented with yeast. Two different sources of sugar may be used, either molasses or white refined sugar.[6]
[edit] Soft drink
In the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland, where it is known in French as bière d'épinette, spruce beer may refer to either an artificially flavored non-alcoholic carbonated soft drink, or to genuine spruce beer.[7]
[edit] Regional varieties
[edit] Europe
Norway Spruce is used for making spruce beer widely in northern Europe.[8] In Scandinavia it is used to flavor fermented ales in the absence of hops.
[edit] North America
Alcoholic spruce beer was common in the colonial United States and eastern Canada, made from red or black spruce.[9] An American recipe[10] from 1796 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, 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.
The Daily Order for the Highland Regiment in North America 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."
Today Sitka spruce, native to the northwest coast of North America, tends to be favored, although other species of spruce have also been used. 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. Sitka spruce trees on the north-central Oregon Coast develop spring growth in early to mid May.
[edit] References
- ^ "Tree Book - Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis)". British Columbia Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/library/documents/treebook/sitkaspruce.htm. Retrieved July 29, 2006.
- ^ Crellin, J. K. (2004). A social history of medicines in the twentieth century: to be taken three times a day. New York: Pharmaceutical Products Press. p. 39. ISBN 0789018446. http://books.google.com/books?id=P1Oy7Qz1tewC&pg=PA39&dq=Spruce+beer+Captain+Cook#v=onepage&q=Spruce%20beer%20Captain%20Cook&f=false. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
- ^ Stubbs, Brett J. (June 2003). "Captain Cook's beer: the antiscorbutic use of malt and beer in late 18th century sea voyages". Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (apjcn.nhri.org.tw) 12 (2): 129–137. http://apjcn.nhri.org.tw/server/APJCN/volume12/vol12.2/fullArticles/index.htm#Nicholas. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
- ^ "Historic Ales". Williams Bros Brewing Co.. http://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/historicales.php?id=44. Retrieved August 18, 2011.
- ^ "Our Beer". Wigram Brewing Co.. http://www.wigrambrewing.co.nz/Menu/Our-Beer.php. Retrieved 2009-10-08.
- ^ "Classification: spiced beer, spruce beer, all-grain". HBD Issue #1435, 5/28/94. http://hbd.org/brewery/cm3/recs/07_39.html. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
- ^ Maynard, L.. "The National Temperance Drink of Newfoundland". Attics and Archives 4 (5): 3. http://torbay.museum.tripod.com/ocean7.htm. Retrieved 2009-11-08.
- ^ Dallimore, W. D., & Jackson, A. B. (1966). A Handbook of Coniferae and Ginkgoaceae. Edward Arnold, London.
- ^ Sanborn Conner Brown; Ed Lindlof; Martin Kaufman (1978). Wines & beers of old New England: a how-to-do-it history. UPNE. p. 67. ISBN 0874511488.
- ^ Simmons, Amelia (1796). American Cookery, Hudson & Goodwin, Hartford, Connecticut. (reproduced by Project Gutenberg)
