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:

• Buhner, Stephen Harrod (1998). Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation. Siris Books. pp. 252–257. ISBN 0-937381-66-7.
• Mosher, Randy (2004). Radical Brewing. Brewers Publications. p. 163. ISBN 0-937381-83-7.
• Shouse, Heather. "Deck the Halls with Beer". Chow.com. Retrieved 2009-10-23.
• Gibbs, Harrison (2003). "A Taste of History: Sprucing Up Your Beer" (PDF). The Cellar: The Official Newsletter of the Colonial Ale Smiths & Keggers. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
• 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)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Spruce beer. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100727033956/http://williamsbrosbrew.com/historicales.php?id=44 to http://www.williamsbrosbrew.com/historicales.php?id=44
• 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
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110917032440/http://www.wigrambrewing.co.nz/Menu/Our-Beer.php to http://www.wigrambrewing.co.nz/Menu/Our-Beer.php

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 03:48, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Relevance of image?

What is the relevance of the 'Canada food icon' with this post? Evert (talk) 12:32, 3 September 2023 (UTC)