I was out yesterday picking spruce tips for a beer that Harpoon is planning to release this winter. I now want to try it on my own, and found a recipe in The Homebrewer’s Garden that says to add 1-4 oz. for 60 min. That seems awfully long. I’d figure more like 15-20 min. would be plenty.
Does anybody have experience with spruce tips? I want enough flavor to come through a porter-like beer with molasses, but definitely would prefer to go light than over-do it. What are people’s thoughts on quantity and length of time in the boil?
There are a few of us who have done spruce beers, I boil a quart of tips in the wort for 60 minutes. Read through this and then let us know if you have other questions.
My experience with spruce is that it takes some time for the flavour to extract, but the best way to approach using them is to try making a series of spruce teas and see what the extraction rate seems to be. All spruce is not equal.
I have had good experience using spruce and blackstrap molasses in a stout.
I’ve used spruce tips with great sucess. I added them about 30 minutes into the boil on a stout recipe (I still do extract/grain brewing) and the pine taste is very subtle and gin like without tasting like pine sol. I actually put spruce tips in a mead last saturday. I only put them in for 15 minutes since I didn’t want to over power the honey.