Spruce Tips

[Rrmuf]

Hi, Does anyone have any experience with spruce tips as a botanical for Gin? I recently had a commercial craft gin with spruce tips and loved it .... so of course I want to try to add spruce tips to a future batch.

[contrahead]

Naw I have no experience with spruce tips.
But I remember a story about the intrepid explorer James C. Cook. And how his crew was near mutiny after exploring for months, the cold Bering seas. And how he landed (near Vancouver or the San Juan Islands) to let his crews get off and make a batch of spruce beer. The beer was full of vitamin C, and good for their health incidentally. Think that was on his last voyage and before the Hawaiians killed him.
(They literally cooked Cook. But modern Hawaiians are adamant that their ancestors did not eat him, though).

[NZChris]

Make an essence to experiment with. Run neutral through spruce, measuring and recording everything as you go. Use the essence to blend with an existing gin to get an idea of how much to use, then calculate how much spruce to use in a gin botanical bill.

[MooseMan]

Hi, Does anyone have any experience with spruce tips as a botanical for Gin? I recently had a commercial craft gin with spruce tips and loved it .... so of course I want to try to add spruce tips to a future batch.

I have experimented with pine needles, which have the same flavour compounds.

I've gotten down to just 6 "Needles" in the botanical bill for a 1L gin batch. Any more than that and the flavour becomes overpowering for me and the gin tastes like Xmas.

This is with fresh green needles, frozen the day they are picked. Ground up in a blender with other ingredients.

[Dancing4dan]

Hi, Does anyone have any experience with spruce tips as a botanical for Gin? I recently had a commercial craft gin with spruce tips and loved it .... so of course I want to try to add spruce tips to a future batch.

Spring time spruce tips would likely make a good Gin botanical. Key word is “spring”. Fresh new growth on the end of the branch in spring when the needles are soft and light green. They are a good to know survival food. Much milder flavour than mature needles.

Eating mature spruce needles is VERY different. Not in a good way.

[Rrmuf]

Thanks for the contributions folks! I'll pick some tips in the next week and probably try the neutral essence route. Good, bad or ugly, I'll report back here.
Cheers.

[Rrmuf]

...unfortunately, it seems i missed the window for the spruce tips this spring. Next year!

[OtisT]

A local distillery makes a spirit with Fir tips. (Douglas Fir). They also use new growth tips collected in the Spring.

[8Ball]

I’ve aged an agave nectar based spirit with new growth pine sprig tips. I added a handful to the spirit run and 2-3 needles to the aging jar. It’s palatable in a good way after three months, but after six months, not so much.