Spruce IPA

I brewed a fairly conventional IPA (well, maybe closer to a double IPA) to satisfy my hop-head brother and sister-in-law, but couldn’t resist “dry-hopping” with some Norway spruce tips from our aging plantation at the top of the watershed. Their fresh, pale twig-ends would quickly be encroaching onto the trail, so they needed pruning in any case.

The main take-away from this experiment is that the quantity I used — 10 ounces — seemed about right. Too much less and the pleasantly piney taste would’ve been smothered under all those hops; too much more and it might’ve been altogether too camphory.

I brewed on June 6, using some saved yeast slurry from a previous batch. (This had been refrigerated for a while in a Grolsch bottle and the sediment had separated from the liquid, so without thinking I gave it a good shake before opening. Bad idea! Fortunately I realized my mistake in time and opened it outside. It fired the little rubber stopper about 25 feet! But enough yeast remained in the bottle to start the beer.) I added the spruce tips five days later in the form of a cooled-down tea with one change of water to take off excess bitterness, erring on the side of caution. I suppose that makes this more wet-hopping than dry-hopping. Can’t remember whether I racked into a demijohn or kept it in the bucket, but it was ready to bottle ten days later. My tasting note from bottling time reads “VERY nice — sprucey but not too.” Yeah, I’m a poet.