Spruce Juice | Blonde Ale 4.2%

I started with my first brew ever which is a Blonde Ale from The Electric Brewery that I call Sweet Lilly and added spruce tips to it.  Sweet Lilly is really a simple beer, light in color and flavour.  I plan to do a number of brews with this as the base and add things such as berries.  When I brewed Sweet Lilly I was able to get the German 2-row but this time Strange Brew was out so I ended up going with American 2-row.

Grain Bill

22lbs Pilsner 2-row (German) – had to use American as there was no German
90 min mash @ 149 & 168 mash out and sparge
3ozs Hallertau @ 45mins (German)
4pkgs Safale US-05
7.5ozs Blue Spruce Tips @ 45mins

Inspiration

I was sitting in the family room thinking about things I could brew with and just out side the door we have a few spruce trees and I thought why not try the new growth…  A quick Google and I discovered this is not a new idea.  People have been brewing with spruce tips for hundreds of years and you can even buy spruce extract – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_beer.

Brew Notes

Water adjustment – 3g gypsum, 3g calcium chloride and 4g magnesium sulfate.  To bring the PH in range I added 2ml of lactic acid to the mash and 3ml to the sparge water.