Spruce tips boil time

[vamo]

Thinking of making the spruce ale from the complete joy of homebrewing. In the book the directions are to add at beginning and boil for the full hr. Most spruce beer recipes I find online suggest a 10-15min boil. Anyone know how boil time would effect flavor? Will something negative happen with a long boil?

I do want to really taste the spruce in the finished product, I am not sure how volatile the spruce flavors are so I'm unsure if the longer boil time would result in stronger note or a weaker one.

Anyone that's used spruce before care to enlighten?

 

[masskrug]

Subscribing. I will be traveling to Colorado this summer and will be gathering some spruce tips for a summer beer.

 

[vamo]

Went ahead and brewed using the full hour called for in the recipe. I'll try to come back update when I have a drinkable product.

 

[vamo]

Just sampled some from the fermentor, its warm and flat, but the spruce taste definitely comes through, looking forward to trying it when its cold and carbonated.

 

[Darth_Malt]

Curious to see how this turns out. How much spruce did you use in what size batch? I'm planning a Northern English Brown with spruce for later this summer. I picked up a little bottle spruce essence, but would love to use some actual spruce in the boil.

 

[SeeMont]

My spruce trees and buddying and i would love to add this to a brew.

 

[porterpounder]

There are a couple of good articles in BYO or Zymurgy a few years back taking spruce beer advice from the brewers at Alaskan. They recommended measuring out the tips by volume (about a quart for 5 gallons of beer) and boiling for 60 minutes. I've never had good results when boiling for less than the full hour. Gets turpentiny, whereas the full boil brings out the nice citrusy sweetness of the tips.

 

[vamo]

I used the recipe from complete joy of homebrewing called "kumdis island spruce ale". It called for 4oz of new spruce growth for a 5 gallon batch so that's what I used. By volume this was a sandwich bag about 3/4 full. It would have probably been easier to harvest had I waited a couple of weeks the new growth is much longer now than it was then, but I was not sure at the time how long the new growth would stay new growth.

 

[vamo]

Just realized I forgot to update on the final product. It definitely has a distinctive spruce bite to it. You might mistake it for just being hoppy if you didn't know better, but its distinctive enough to standout. Also has a slight cola note to it, its a darker beer so this is probably a combination of the spruce tips and the malt.

All in All I consider it a success and will definitely use spruce again. I call this 1 tree beer and mention I made it from stuff I got off the tree in the front yard to steer guests toward other brews when I'm feeling stingy