Talk:Spruce beer

beer / non-beer
Recently edits have been made to this article shifting the subject from an attempt at a balanced beer/soda discussion to a de-emphasis of the beer style and emphasis of the soda/non-beer beverages. The following text was removed: "Spruce has been a traditional flavoring ingredient throughout the upper latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere where it is found, often substituting for ingredients otherwise not available, such as hops." This was added: "Spruce beer, despite its name, is - like Ginger beer and Root beer - not a type of beer."  I think this is an overly dismissive treatment of spruce as used in traditional beer and ale. I would just revert, but the edits appear to be made with good intentions so I thought we could discuss here. Maybe it could be made more clear that the term "spruce beer" has several different meanings that vary by geography and culture? I know that some places have a tradition of "non-beer" spruce beer, but that shouldn't invalidate the use of spruce in true beers and ales. Here are some refs regarding spruce used in beer and ale that can be worked into the article:


 * The Joy of Homebrewing may also mention spruce beer...
 * The Joy of Homebrewing may also mention spruce beer...
 * The Joy of Homebrewing may also mention spruce beer...
 * The Joy of Homebrewing may also mention spruce beer...
 * The Joy of Homebrewing may also mention spruce beer...

--BlueCanoe (talk) 18:02, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Northern Europe and Scandinavia
Even if there is a source for this info: "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." I'd say that "widely" is nonsense. I have lived in Northern Europe, Scandinavia and Finland all my life and never even heard of spruce beer. And I used to drink a lot of beer, lol. --86.60.222.33 (talk) 21:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Yep, that part is bogus. I'm going through the results of a 1950s survey of farmhouse brewing in Norway, where one of the questions to brewers is what flavourings they use. All the answers so far are "juniper and hops". Nothing else. Matti Räsänen summarized a similar survey of Finnish farmhouse ale (sahti) and there it's the same thing: juniper only. I have several accounts of Danish farmhouse brewing, and again there's no spruce (nor any juniper). I have recipes from Jämtland and Gotland in Sweden, and they used juniper only. Räsänen summarizes brewing in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia, too, and again there is no spruce whatsoever. I'm pretty sure the authors of that 1966 book either confused juniper with spruce, or they simply made it up. LarsMarius (talk) 21:18, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20131203102427/https://www.beaus.ca/beer/pro-am/spruce_moose to https://www.beaus.ca/beer/pro-am/spruce_moose
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Relevance of image?
What is the relevance of the 'Canada food icon' with this post? Evert (talk) 12:32, 3 September 2023 (UTC)