HBC spruce beer recipe

[I-GOR]

I just finished a book about the HBC. Below is the recipe for spruce beer from a HBC manual. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if it would work or not. Also are a few interesting excerpts from the book.



The demand for liquor grew so fast that by the end of the eighteenth century the Company shipped to its post at Churchill a dismantled still, capable of turning molasses into a hundred gallons of “cordials.” But for undetermined reasons, the machinery was never installed and was returned to England the following year. A highly successful brewing operation was by then flourishing at every HBC outpost, with the Company supplying most of the required malt. The recipe for Spruce beer, a valuable antiscorbutic, was literally explosive because the gunpowder was used to accelerate the aging process:

To brew this beer, the kettle being near full of water, cram the kettle with small pine; from one experiment you will judge the quantity of pine that will bear a proportion to your water. Let the tops of the pine be boiled in the water until the pine turns yellow, and the bark peels, or the sprigs strip off readily on being pulled; then take off your kettle, and the pine out of the water and to about two gallons of liquor put a quarter of a pint of molasses. Hang your kettle on, giving the liquor off, put it into a cask in which you have before put cold water, the quantity of about two gallons. Then take a gun with a small quantity of powder, and no wad; fire into the bunghole. It will set the liquor a working; in about twenty-four hours stop the cask down, and the liquor will be ready to drink.

The Factors complained in their journals to London about “the sots” they had been assigned and urge the Committeemen to recruit fresh-faced country lads “not debauched by the voluptuousness of London.” The effects of so much drink – by 1766, York Factory alone was storing 2,474 gallons of “brandy” – were occasionally bizarre….

As early as 1682, the HBC had shipped 440 gallons of brandy to its posts, mainly for use a part of the trading ceremony with the Indians. Each subsequent liquid cargo was accompanied by a long written instructions such as this 1692 notice sent to George Geyer, then Governor at York Factory: “Whereas we have sent you a very large quantity of new French brandy, which we procured with great difficulty, our desire is that what you shall not have emediate use for it in the Factory to trade either with the Natives or our Servants.” Anthony Beale, and HBC apprentice who rose to be Governor of Albany, received an even sterner admonition on June 10, 1713: “… Trade as little brandy as possible to the Indians, we be informed it has destroyed several of them.”

But by the middle of the eighteenth century, the French traders operating out of Montreal had introduced enough brandy and rum into the native economy that little fur could be traded with the abstinence requested by the HBC’s absentee landlords. As suited their style of pragmatic entrepreneurship, the London Committeemen accepted the fact that liquor was a necessary part of their operations and became canny about its use and manufacture. Since brandy from France was expensive and scarce because of the frequent conflicts between Versailles and the British throne, the HBC governors abandoned the French product and introduced a mixture they christened English Brandy. This was cheap (almost raw) London gin to which were added drops of any of several tinctures (usually iodine) to duplicate the rich auburn colour of the real brandy. “We have sent in the medicine chest a bottle of tincture to colour the English Brandy,” explained an official communication dated May 2, 1735, from Hudson’s Bay House in London to Thomas Maclish, then Governor at Albany. “When there shall be occasion, four or five drops thereof are sufficient to colour a pint and so in proportion for a larger quantity.” This raw recipe worked, but the iodine was soon replaced with molasses that not only coloured the rotgut but gave the potent brew a touch of sweetness.

With kegs of “brandy” freely available for the Indian trace, the Company instituted regular rations (one quart each Wednesday and Saturday) for its own personnel. According to account books at Prince of Wale’s Fort, by 1721 the official average per capita staff consumption amounted to seven and a half gallons per year, but because there were several teetotalers, it was probably closer to ten gallons – not counting the active illicit trade. Thomas Smith, a stonemason at Prince of Wale’s Fort, for example, was granted an extra ten gallons of brandy a year in return for risking his life blowing up rocks for the Fort’s walls – an activity that the local Factor’s journal laconically noted resulted in regular wounds to “the head, legs and hands that were not mortall.”

Moose Factory was one of the Company’s earliest settlements, dating back to its choice in 1673 as the principal factory at the Bottom of the Bay. It quickly evolved into the equivalent of a provincial capital, becoming the transportation hub for the chain of southern outposts and the magnet for Indians from the mesh of rivers that empty into James Bay. After being destroyed by the French under the Chevalier do Troyes, it was rebuilt in 1730, but Moose was never a happy post. It became the most “corrupted” (which in the parlance of the day meant that it had “gone Indian”) of all the HBC factories. The guzzling of brandy remained the biggest problem. “”Many of the accidents at the Moose were alchohol-related,” concluded Frits Pennekoek in his study, “Corruption at Moose,” published in The Beaver magazine. “One man consumed so much ‘bumbo’ – that fur-trade mixture of rum, water, sugar and nutmeg – that he fell off the sloop and promptly drowned. With some regret and much haste, his mates lost not time auctioning off the contents of his chest. The chief factors were always afraid that the men on watch, who were too often drunk, would, spitefully or accidentally, set fire to the buildings. The courage to commit suicide could also be found in the bottle. ‘Brandy-death’ was common, and known in Rupert’s Land as a Northwester’s Death.”

Regarding Indians who were brought to Paris….. The natives were not particularly overawed by the large buildings nor wildly impressed by the carriages and litters; they managed to suppress any sign of enthusiasm for white women and retained their dignity even when pawed over by various impertinent royal personages assembled to inspect them – but they were utterly flabbergasted by the way Parisian women treated their dogs. The visitors were unable to understand the affection showered on the pooches when they had seen orphanages filled with unwanted children. They could not comprehend the horror on a saleswoman’s face when they tried to buy the main course for a traditional dog feast. One of the Indian visitors carefully produced a table of Parisian dog-walking habits that ironically presaged later anthropological reports on North American Indians:

Women leading one little dog 432
Women leading two little dogs 71
Women leading three little dogs 5
Women with big dogs following (no string) 80
Women carrying little dogs 20
Women with little dogs in carriages 31

The French visit was followed by a tour of England by a dozen Chipewyan from the HBC territories in 1848. All but three died of pneumonia and English cooking.

James Knight at York Factory records that during three days of feasting at Christmas in 1715, he allocated to each mess hall of four men a helping of four geese, a large slice of beef, four hares, seven pounds of fresh pork, two pounds of drippings, a pound of butter, three and a half pounds of fruit preserves, four pound of flour and a hogshead (51 gallons) of strong beer. Records at Moose Factory show that on Christmas Day, 1705, each four-man mess had been doled out enough victuals to make York Factory rations look like a snack. The bill of fare read : five geese, twelve partridge, sixty fish, eight pounds of mutton, three pounds of suet, two pints of rice, twenty pounds of flour, two pounds of bacon, eight pints of oatmeal, four pounds of biscuit bread, two pounds of cheese, two pounds of raisins, a pound and a half of butter and one piece of salt beef.

[smokerscully1]

Igor--whats the name of that book? I have been somewhat of a history buff concerning the HBC, especially as it pertains to Indian Treaties and the forming of Canada as a country.

I have often wondered, since so many of the Factors came from Scotland, if distilling where a practiced art on the frontier. The old Company kept very good records but with the board of directors so far away in London I assume much activity went on unrecorded. The Company for over two hundred years had a rule against relations with Indian women and I am living proof of how well that rule was followed.

The precurser of the RCMP, the Northwest Mounted Police, was expressly formend to stop the wiskey trade on the plains. Many of the American wiskey traders produced thier own product in portable stills. Really cheap rotgut to trade for pemican, buffalo hides and bones.

I have often thought the major differences between Americans and Canadians can be traced to the fact of the formation of the respective countries.

The USA was started by a bunch of planters (farmers) and small buisnessmen who disliked paying taxes. They well knew that democracy only works until the elected realize they can vote themselves largess at the expense of the masses. Therefore a system of checks and balances needed to be instituted.

Canada on the other hand was run as a corporation, with the board of directors far away. Ruperts Land had to be purchased from the HBC in order for the country to obtain self-determination.

'The Boss may not always be right--but he's always the Boss.' No one has any qualms about demeaning a politician but most people are rather careful about questioning the Boss.

[I-GOR]

Smokerscully :

Sorry about the delay, I haven't checked back on this post.

The book is Company of Adventurers, author Peter C. Newman, Viking (Penguin Press) 1985

The Company for over two hundred years had a rule against relations with Indian women and I am living proof of how well that rule was followed..

My great grammy was 1 part O'Spurgeon and 1 part Blackfoot.