Spruce Cider

I just got started in homebrewing after being inspired by the "1 minute wine" and other recipes that made it seem really simple... so long as you aren't making beer. I decided to go with cider.



It's spruce tip season, so I felt like taking advantage of it and seeing what a spruce cider would taste like. I'm guessing the evergreen taste would go well with dryness.



I made a spruce syrup by steeping the tips for an hour with a cup of sugar. Half of the syrup made its way into an attempted spruce beer. It actually didn't really add any spruce flavour to either drink, I probably just did it wrong.



I poured out some juice and added the "syrup" directly into the bottle along with some raisins (I saw it in some recipes and I'm not really sure why) and a clove. I used EC-1118, which I also used for the spruce beer. The syrup was the only source of added sugar.



I put it in a bucket so it wouldn't make a mess if it got too active. That's the spruce beer behind it. After a week, fermentation seemed to have stopped (I bought a hydrometer and confirmed the SG was right at 1.000). I had a taste, understanding it wouldn't taste how it's supposed to so early. It tasted like a dry white wine, which I've learned is what you'd expect from using EC-1118. Notably absent was any kind of spruce flavour... I decided to go with the nuclear option and put the tips right in the fermenter. Maybe they would steep a lot more effectively in the alcohol over a week?

I've made cold-brewed iced tea many times... all you need to do is leave some teabags in a pitcher of water overnight in the freezer, and take the bags out in the morning. You end up with a very pleasant, bold flavour that's lacking the astringency you get from boiling.



I went out and got some more spruce tips, froze two pint-sized bags of it for later, and put a half-cup directly into the fermenter. Two days later, I took another taste and noticed a spruce flavour had suddenly appeared... but I felt like really going overboard with the spruce so I added another half-cup. I was taking the sample directly from the top, so I assumed it was a bit stronger than in the rest of the cider anyways.



2 weeks after pitching the yeast, 1 week after adding the spruce tips, I bottled it in some 750mL swing-top bottles. Not pictured is a half-full Orangina bottle chilling in the fridge. I simply poured it out using a sieve and funnel, and the yeast cake wasn't really cakey at all, so some of it got mixed up in the Orangina bottle, I'm hoping it will just settle out in the fridge and not make it taste like ass.

I mixed 1/4 cup of the original apple juice directly in the fermenter before bottling in the hopes that the small bit of sugar will carb it. I wanted to be really conservative (3g / L) since it's my first time and I didn't want any bottle bombs. Next time I'll probably do a proper bottling bucket setup, I was just lazy.

It's hazy because I really, really don't care about clarity. It makes it look more rustic and boreal... right?

I'll try and post again in a week or two when the bottles are hopefully carbed up and it's got some flavour beyond super-dry white wine. Even if that hasn't changed, I'm fairly confident the spruce will be pretty strong.

Initial Specific Gravity: 1.055 (just an estimate! includes added sugar)
Final Specific Gravity: 1.000
Approx. ABV: 7%

So, here's the ingredients in detail:
2L Rougemont Royal Gala Apple Juice
¼ tsp Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast
1 whole clove
10 raisins
~1 cup spruce syrup

Spruce Syrup
~2 cups (60g?) fresh spruce tips
2 cups filtered water
1 cup (200g) sugar

Pour water in a small saucepan, bring to a boil, add sugar and mix it in. Remove from heat, add the tips, and cover, then let it steep for an hour.

Keep in mind that I used half of the syrup for the spruce beer, which ended up a complete failure. I let it ferment for 2 days, crashed it in the fridge, and all it tasted like was a sweet, yeasty, fusel mess that wasn't even carbonated well. I don't think I'm going to bother with homemade soda anymore.

If I were to do it again, I'd just skip the syrup entirely and do the "dry hop" method after fermentation completes. I only left it in here for completeness.

So, it's been a little over three weeks and it's all carbed up and ready to drink. It ended up clarifying fine. I'm not surprised that there's very little carbonation, I might go for 6g sugar / L next time or somewhere in-between just to see what it's like.

Here it is in a THQ glass which is a collector's item now, I guess


The spruce flavour unfortunately isn't very present... it mostly just tastes like a nice dry cider. I wonder if the flavour will come out in aging, or if I just need to do it differently next time. I feel like I used enough, but maybe I'm wrong.

I'm about to brew a ginger clove cider, and probably a wildberry wine after that, so maybe I'll come back to trying a spruce cider again before the holidays.

Unfortunately due to laziness I missed my spruce harvest this year. I haven't made a spruce beer yet, but from reading, my understanding is the flavor from spruce tips is supposed to be more floral than piney. Maybe your expectations are in the wrong direction...

What I expected is a bit mellower version of the taste when you eat one of the tips raw. Basically, like a brand of spruce beer (soda) I used to drink sometimes when I lived in Montreal. I wish I had kept those swing-top bottles.



I did notice the "piney" taste a few days from a sample after trying out the "dry hop" method, so I'm frankly confused how that didn't get more intense after adding more spruce tips and giving it more time.

But I could certainly be barking up the wrong tree anyways, mis-remembering the Marco spruce beer flavour.

Did you use actual black spruce tips? there are several kinds of spruce, not all of them are useful for brewing. Black spruce is the one traditionally used in brewing & gum.
Regards, GF.

I didn't do a good job identifying the particular spruce species, just the fact that they were spruce and not fir, hemlock, etc. I believe the first batch I got (which went into the syrup) was blue spruce, and the second batch (which got "dry hopped") was white or red spruce, or some other kind.

Thanks for the tip!

I just brewed something similar yesterday. Mixed in a couple gallons of juice with a spruce syrup I made earlier this spring.

I didn't notice any spruce flavor when I tried the unfermented sample. Hopefully it comes out once it's fermented. You have any recommendations for amping up the spruce flavor if it needs it. I have a bag of frozen tips I can "dry hop" with. Recommendations on amounts?

In all I used about as many fit into a pint-sized ziploc bag... now I have a kitchen scale so I just measured the two bags in my freezer and it came out to 70-80g each. If you pick them earlier, when they are small nibs (which I didn't) they will probably have a more intense flavour and you won't need so many. Next year I'm going to try picking them when they're that size and see if it improves things. The bigger ones I harvested still had a strong spruce flavour if you bit into them, so they seemed pretty viable.

I'd suggest using at least a whole bag per gallon, but I can't really advise one way or the other because the flavour didn't make its way into the cider after one week in bottles. I have the second bottle of this still sitting in the closet, I will probably wait another month or two (or until Christmas, if I can wait that long) and pop it open to see if the spruce has come back.

Been thinking of trying something similar with juniper berries. Thanks for the inspiration!
Regards, GF.

Zymomancer said:

In all I used about as many fit into a pint-sized ziploc bag... now I have a kitchen scale so I just measured the two bags in my freezer and it came out to 70-80g each. If you pick them earlier, when they are small nibs (which I didn't) they will probably have a more intense flavour and you won't need so many. Next year I'm going to try picking them when they're that size and see if it improves things. The bigger ones I harvested still had a strong spruce flavour if you bit into them, so they seemed pretty viable.

I'd suggest using at least a whole bag per gallon, but I can't really advise one way or the other because the flavour didn't make its way into the cider after one week in bottles. I have the second bottle of this still sitting in the closet, I will probably wait another month or two (or until Christmas, if I can wait that long) and pop it open to see if the spruce has come back.

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Thanks. I think I'll hit it hard with the "dry hop." I picked them early. My experience has been the young shoots have more sweet citrusy flavor and don't have as much pine as tips that have developed more. The more developed tips have seemed pinier, sharper and more fragrant

My "cellar" is now reduced to a new batch I'm waiting to carb up and some berry wine I'm aging, so I bit the bullet and popped open the second bottle of this.

After about 3 months of aging the spruce flavour is still pretty absent, but part of me wants to blame it on the EC-1118 somehow because I've done two batches with S-04 since and the spice additions to both have been pretty strong, despite being a lot less than the 70-80g found in a bag of spruce tips. I could also just be a lot better at spice additions now since I actually rack to secondary on top of the herb additions after fermentation is definitely finished.

I'm less and less impressed with the cider itself now, probably because I've spent more time drinking craft ciders and making more batches with S-04. This one just tastes mostly flavourless, like a weak white wine, it hasn't got the acidity or tannins that I added to my most recent batches (both the gruit cider and the berry wine) that end up making things a whole lot better. Maybe I'll squeeze a lime wedge and add a bit of tea to the rest of the bottle and see what happens.

Zymomancer said:

I'd suggest using at least a whole bag per gallon, but I can't really advise one way or the other because the flavour didn't make its way into the cider after one week in bottles.

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Woah, you're suggesting 20g/L?! That seems really, really heavy to me, considering you dry hop a cider with ~2g/L. Are spruce tips really 10% the potency of hops?