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Spruce Beer

Dissolve sixteen pounds of treacle in eight gallons of water. Strain the liquor into a cask, and add eight gallons of cold water and six table-spoonfuls of the essence of spruce. Keep in a warm place, and when the liquor is new-milk-warm, stir briskly into it half a pint of good fresh yeast. Leave it for a day or two until fermentation ceases, then bung it up closely. The following day it may be bottled, and can be used in a week. Sometimes the beer is flavoured by boiling for this quantity a tea-cupful of bruised ginger, a tea-spoonful of allspice, and three ounces of hops in a small quantity of the liquor, and adding this to the rest. When the outer sprigs of the spruce fir can be obtained, they may be boiled for a few minutes in a little of the liquor, and this decoction may be used instead of the essence. A pound of the sprigs will be equivalent to a pound and a half of the essence.