Spruce beer is a beverage flavored with the buds, needles, or essence of spruce trees. Spruce beer can refer to either alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages.
A number of flavors are associated with spruce-flavored beverages, ranging from floral, citrusy, and fruity to cola-like flavors to resinous and piney. This diversity in flavor likely comes from the choice of spruce species, the season in which the needles are harvested, and the manner of preparation.
Using evergreen needles to create beverages originated with the Indigenous peoples of North America who used the drink as a cure for scurvy during the winter months when fresh fruits were not available. It may also have been brewed in Scandinavia prior to European contact with the Americas, but French and British explorers were ignorant of its use as a anti-scurvy treatment when they arrived in North America. The fresh shoots of many spruces and pines are a natural source of vitamin C. European sailors adopted the practise and spread it across the world.
Read more about Spruce Beer: Modern Types
Famous quotes containing the words spruce and/or beer:
“You did not expect to find such spruce trees in the wild woods, but they evidently attend to their toilets each morning even there. Through such a front yard did we enter that wilderness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What two ideas are more inseparable than beer and Britannia?”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)