another commission brew. My cousin-in-law requested a neighbourhood-get-together festive beer, and after tossing ideas around we settled on “something with spruce tips from the trees in the surrounding woodsy parkland”.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. Your thoughts greatly appreciated.
For 20l of 1.059SG beer:
4kg pale 80%
1 kg rye malt 20%
.5 kg oat husks to prevent the rye from gumming up my mash bed
Boil for 70’ with
20g Chinook @ T-60’ ~30IBU
100g spruce tips @T-30’
Cool and pitch with Wyeast3711 French Saison. Ferment @ 23°C
Never brewed with spruce nor Chinook before.
I’m aiming for a dry beer which will showcase the (reported) citrussy flavors of the spruce, combined with the spicyness of both rye and 3711.
The Chinook is there mostly for bittering and an undercurrent supportive to the piney resins of the spruce. I’ve heard it descrived as “Saaz in a pine forest” which fits the bill as far as I’m concerned.
What this would taste like in my mind is a beery interpretation of a mildly assertive retsina wine.
Things about which I am in dubio:
30’ boil of 100g of spruce (~4oz) is about mid-way of what I’ve found here and there with reported good presence of spruce without the beer becoming a resin-laden puddle of creosote. Too much? Too little?
would it benefit from a mild late dose of hops (Chinook or other) without stealing the spruce’s thunder?
instead of (or in addition to?) boiling the spruce, I could go Sahti on it and infuse the mash water with it. Choices choices…
How much time do you have? I ask because this sounds like a great idea and could be great but too much spruce and it could be a disaster considering that you are sharing it with a bunch of people with various tastes who likely will start out skeptical to begin with. If there is time do a small experimental batch. Also, I haven’t used spruce but I wonder if it could be dry “hopped” so you can remove it when it tastes right. Or maybe make a tincture and dose it?
I just picked a few ounces of spruce tips and plan to do a beer later this year. My plan is likely to use them in a hopstand and dry hop them along with hops but this will likely be for a pale ale.
Oh I’ve time, but don’t want to keep my cous’ waiting for too long.
I wonder how well the spruce would do in dry hopping. I chewed a few leaves/needles and they didn’t taste very assertive at first. Only when chewed to a pulp did the flavour start to come out. This doesn’t inspire much optimism in me when considering dry-sprucing, but confirms my belief they could with a bit of boiling.
The only thing I’ll add is to get out there right away and get the spruce tips and freeze them. you want to use the fresh light green spring tips which are still out here in VT, USA but I’m not sure what the seasonal progression is like where you are.
I tried one of the Anchor holiday ales years ago that had spruce - they used a lighter hand than I did with the spruce and I still couldn’t drink it. To each his own though.
I think this beer is a good idea but making it for a party the first time, not so much. Even if it comes out perfect my guess is 10% love it, 20% take 1 sip, and 70% have one, say “it’s different” and drink something else the rest of the party.
When I use my “taste imagination” on your recipe, I get conflicts between the spruce, rye, and 3711. Have you really thought through the final flavors?
I always thought they were like chewing on a 2X4 until I had one at Fort George brewing in Astoria, OR. Then I saw the appeal as it was citrusy and had a touch of pine.
Soo I actually brew with spruce tips a lot, both beer and meads. The one thing with spruce is you need to pick them early before they get too woody. early like you have to remove all the brown papery stuff. The good news is that they freeze great. also the quality or flavor of spruce tips vary year to year depending on weather. for all of my brews I boil the tips for a full 60 minutes. the needles are waxy it takes heat and time to get the flavor. I would skip late additions and dry hopping (tipping) with the tips. I actually did a spruce tip rye last year. Taste great but didn’t do so well in competition. feedback included low rye flavor and sweet. spruce can impart sweetness, with a saison though I think that additional saison flavor should keep down the sweetness. the next time I brew this beer I am going to increase the rye, the spruce flavor made it hard to identify the rye. I kept the hops low to let the spruce shine.
here is my recipe for a 2.5 gallon batch
4.5lb 2-row
1.0lb rye malt
4.0 oz 10L
4.0 oz spruce tip 60 minute
.25 oz Magnum 30 minute
.25 oz centennial 10 minute
Thanks for sharing. Do you think a decent pale ale could be made with using just the spruce at 60 min similarly to your post? This thread has me rethinking my idea. Sorry…not meaning to hijack.
I hear you on the freshness of the tips. They’re fresh off the trees just yesterday, having just emerged from their brown casing. Ideal, from what I understand.
Which yeast did you use?
I can live with “It’s different”. I’ll barely have enough for everyone attending so if anyone even has the option of asking for seconds, I’d be very lucky.
Having said that, having people actually enjoy the beer would definitely be a plus
I have, actually.
The 3711 and the rye, to me, were probably made for each other, very much like rye or any other flavourful grainy/spicy malt is made for saison.
The spruce…having never actually had spruce beer (ever), I can only imagine. And my imagination comes up with a less resiny and more beery take on retsina. Which, if I wax poetic, is to greek wine version what saison would be to beer.
Mind, I’m talking classic saison, not the thing we call farmhouse IPA these days.
Can you describe the conflicts you’re picking up, Denny?
I used the Wyeast Northwestern ale yeast. I picked mine about three weeks here in Juneau, ak. we had an unusually warm winter and dry spring. should be interesting to see how they taste this year.
I have found that the spruce gives a citrusy sweet flavor, I would use some hops to give it a bit of bitterness. I think some people assume because it is pine it produces a gin/piney like flavor, which it does not.
I keep hearing conflicting reports. One says “creosote even when using just a little for as little as 5’ boil”, the other claims “mild citrus flavour with 60’ boil”. Amounts vary.
My recipe is probably somewhere in the middle, with the Chinook addition as an attempt to elevate both pine and spice. Whatever citrus I’ll get must be down to the spruce then.
