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SPRUCE BEER (another way)

This is made by adding the essence of spruce to water in which sugar or treacle has been dissolved in the proportion of about four ounces of essence of spruce to ten pounds of sugar, or three quarts of treacle, and ten or eleven gallons of water, and with about half a pint of yeast. For flavouring, various spices are added. "A similar beverage," says a writer in "Chambers' Encyclopaedia," "is made largely in the north of Europe from the buds of the Norway spruce, and is known as Black Beer, that of Danzig being the most famous. The antiscorbutic beer of the Russian army pharmacopoeia is made by mixing spruce tops and fresh horse-radish-root with common beer, ginger and Calamus aromaticus being added for flavouring, and, after fermentation, a little cream of tartar, tincture of mustard, and proof spirit."