@Juicelad I'm afraid you're mistaken on History Channel's current programming lineup being unprofitable. There IS a fairly stable viewership for shows like Pawn Star and Storage Wars - otherwise they would have been cancelled a long time ago. Truth is, with the en masse cutting of cable subscriptions by the American public, the niche audience who would actually enjoy shows like the Townsends have left the market. It's not a coincidence that the decline of actual historical content at History Channel coincide with the rise of RU-vid and other internet-based streaming platforms.
Your so right! It's amazing to see and hear about 1700 to 1800 living, eating, and other ways or things people did back then to live. Plus the wearing of the traditional clothing of the time is a topping of the cake
Ya know, you could grow yeast from soaking mushrooms found on the forest floor, just make sure you don't grab any of the poisonous ones...or the OTHER kind of poisonous ones...who's down for some psychedelic yeast beer?
Yeah, even though I don't much care for them nowadays, I still recall the by far BEST sentence in all of Anne Rice's Vampire books: "Humans invented agriculture because they wanted to have a steady supply of wheat to make beer".
I highly recommend making beer. It's a fun hobby. And if you want a modern spruce (flavored) beer try Pennsylvania Tuxedo. It's a saison that just uses spruce tips as an adjunct. It actually inspired me. I'm currently conditioning a Belgian tripel, but in fall I'll likely be making a flavored saison.
@@savethesnails9608 yeah not pine, more like hops lol, to each their own. My grandmother used to make both pine,spruce needle tea when we had colds as a kid, that I can drink..now a real IPA hell no!
@@Seizurebleak To be fair I can't say that I haven't had an IPA that I didn't enjoy, but it was a rather mild brew as far as they go, but I can say I have tried some that stained my mouth with the bitterness for days, and gave me quit a sour stomach, hats to those who enjoy the rather strong flavor of bitter hops the IPA carries. I myself am more of a pilsner type of guy, I also enjoy a good stout Wich you might find odd being I don't typically like an IPA. Anyways 🍻 friend happy drinking 😎
As a little boy my family was getting ready on Xmas eve and I asked my mother if we could leave cookies and milk out for Santa. My father looked up from what he was doing and said, "I think Santa would prefer a beer."
HERPY DERPEDY yeah cuz as a kid I knew bud light was cheap crap as a kid what I thought tasted best was vodka although I didn’t drink much of anything I would just taste it like a tiny sip
This is so cool!! My friend is from Alaska and makes the most incredible spruce tip IPA. She won an award for it at her local home brewing contest!!! She has a pretty hair raising tale of picking fresh spruce tips and being charged by a grizzly
I like this guy because you can see there's a genuine passion behind what he's teaching, he has all this knowledge of a cool and fascinating history, and simply showing it to people makes him giddy. Love it!
This is truly the most wholesome channel on youtube. In a world where everyone is jaded, Jon has such genuine excitement and passion for the content he creates. When he tries his creations or is making them, you can tell he is thinking about the people who did it so long ago, and what their experiences were. Thank you for making your passion something we can all enjoy.
11:05 Brewer's advice here: NEVER dip your finger in unfermented wort after it has been boiled. You will introduce new bacteria which can spoil the beer
@@jimb0e186 ......maybe if you let the beer sit for months. But they were drinking this daily. No time for it to spoil boyo, if you get botulism from day 1 of your spruce beer, you reaaaaaally mucked up somewhere before you dipped your finger in....like dipping your still alive chicken in it. And then licking said chicken.
@@plaguemarine7767 after boiling you let it ferment for a couple of days. So introducing bacteria to a bucket of unrefrigerated sugar water can definitely ruin a beer, especially if you don't add enough active yeast
I really love this channel. Even though I don't eat or partake in all of these things, seeing people and food and equipment of the 17th and 18th century brought to life in such painstaking detail is a marvel to watch
I personally think very highly of hobbies. But I've been around people who produce professional work but modestly call it a "hobby". This is a Scandinavian cultural quirk (Law of Jante). Sorensen is a common Scandinavian name, a clue to my cultural background. So no offense was intended. I agree that he has a wonderful role in preserving history and making it accessible for the general public.
I'd try it. Back in highschool i was hustling toothache tree bark for classmates to use as dip. Principle freaked right out when he saw me open my jacket and pull out a little baggy of brown and green stuff and then exchange it for money with other students lol.
@@ThirrinDiamond sorry, not a sauce XD. More like chewing tobacco. I guess Snuff is the proper term. I can definitely see how that would get confusing though.
I know it's a tired cliche to call any enthusiastic, skilled proponent of an art the "Bob Ross of X" but Townsends really is the Bob Ross of vintage victuals. It's like being wrapped in a big blanket of knowledge and experience.
I think the litmus test is, "Would PBS in the 80s have made a show with this level of production quality, and care on this topic?" This channel surpasses that bar so well.
You lose about half of the vitamin c when boiling it, so a lot is still present in the beer. One thing you could do to retain more of the vitamin c, is simply make a tea by steeping the spruce in warm (100°) water for an hour and mix that in when you're pitching your yeast.
@@LegendofLaw Just think, everything edible and many things inedible were once consumed for the first time by someone. It's a testament to humanity's curiosity and bravery (and, perhaps, it's foolhardiness).
@@dylanmccallister1888 In some cases, but it's likely most of the people who first tried things died. So I'd put it more like "Knowledge is built off the observations of the wise and the sacrifices of the foolhardy."
i clicked onto your channel after finding my way to it (thank Mrs Crocombe for that), and i felt sad because one of the videos on your main channel was uploaded 2 years ago, and i worried that i was a bit late to the party and you guys shut down. But then I clicked onto your VIDEOS tab and lo and behold - you're here! with a fresh, hot video only fifteen or so minutes old! Yay! So lucky to have found this channel! Thank you for what you do!
I came here from "you may like..." From Mrs. Crocomhe too!! As someone who used to go on vacation to colonial Williamsburg alot when I was a child, and loved it, these videos jog such great memories of the reenactments I saw there!
Jon, this came up before and I wanted to correct you on it back then but didn't have the chance: the amount of yeast you use per volume is not linear. All modern yeast is scaled to one to five gallons, i.e. you use the same amount for one as you do five, and even ten is not much more. The reason this is so is because of scale factors. In practice, it's almost impossible to use too much yeast and you do not want to use too little or the wild factors can take over. Two gallons is a very small batch as far as scale goes and you should add the full amount and not go under that amount. We need a fairly high population in all cases and this does not mean you can scale it with volume like you would a pie or cake recipe for example. I've been brewing everything under the sun for about 50 years now and you can believe me. What you say may sound intuitive...but it is not. The reason for this is the dynamics of dealing with a live organism and not a static ingredient.
@@GavinTheEnchantedHunchback When you speak of brewing, you can never say something "will turn out just fine" - because there are so many variables. Some of these variables can be controlled and perhaps even eliminated with modern brewing equipment and methods, and others not so much. Anytime you reduce the amount of yeast used to ferment a batch, you are lengthening the time during which bad things can happen - the lower the initial yeast population, the longer it takes the yeast to propagate to the proper population necessary to ferment the beer, and the greater probability that undesired organisms will find their way into your fermenting beer and out-compete the yeast for the fermentable sugars. Most of these undesirable organisms are undesirable because they produce very unpleasant odors and flavors. So your premise that splitting the yeast population is guaranteed to produce successful results is inaccurate and, in fact, quite a risky proposition.
@@GavinTheEnchantedHunchback True, don't you just love it when some know it all tells you you can't do what you've been doing successfully for years "because blah blah blah".
When we were doing Civil War living history, my wife got into 19th century cooking. We ordered all kinds of gear from your magazine and she used to copy recipes from your calendars to cook during "heavy camping events". Love your vids and company, always recommend them to people into history whether they do living history or not.
Gotta let it go flat/degas then "prime" it with a little sugar. If only your uncles had researched their hobby poor Grandma's basement might have been spared.
It helps to ferment it all the way, and then add small amount of sugar to each bottle. Leave the bottles in water proof box for few weeks to age and carbonate. That way if any do go off, its contained.
I rather fancy trying this recipe with the maple and a second batch with honey. Then maybe a 50/50 split of honey and maple to make MapleSpruceMead. Serve with poutine for intense Canadian flavours.
I have questions about maple mead cause that sounds amazing. I've had regular mead before but where could one find the maple variant and if its available commercially, are there any brands in particular that are superior to others?
@@potatopotawto1412 You can pour hot (not boiling water) over it and let it steep in a cup without destroying the vit C if you need a warm drink (winter) or are heating the water to sterilize it, but most of the time you just put the needles into your canteen and let them sit there and steep as you walk.
Early Americans are so fascinating to me. So practical, resourceful, and ingenious. I think a lot of that spirit still lives in the interior and less built up areas.
Man I just gotta say you bring me a lot of early 2000s sunday TV programming nostalgia and it's amazing. Not only is it so comforting to watch your channel but it is also such a courtesy of you to show us the things you love and inform us about them and entertain us with them. Im totally gonna bake an onion. You're awesome.
As a guy who used to brew the occasional batch of beer in college (with extremely inconsistent quality) I am 100% gunna try this out. The fact that this will ferment in just a few days to maybe weeks (if you include the bottled fermentation) in comparison to the months that beer takes already looks amazing to me.
I finally got around to doing this. I went with molasses and added a little anise extract. It came out tasting like a more savory root beer. The spruce really comes out at the finish. This has been really fun. I'm planning on making ginger beer next.
My understanding is that pine needles, corns (immature cones) and flowers serve a similar purpose as hops in modern beer. They add astringency, aroma and flavor to the beer.
It's to bitter beer, that's the main purpose of hops. Without it, beer is very sweet. Hops became the main way to bitter beer in Europe around the 1500's. Before that, and in some places after that, various herbs were used, we call it gruit today. The most widely used herbs and plants we know of are heather, bog myrtle, yarrow and dandelion. Spruces, firs and pines were probably used too but I don't think nearly as widely, perhaps in Scandinavia, but in the British isles and mainland Europe, there were mostly deciduous trees and not many pines, spruces or firs.
My favorite thing about this channel is all the little items, the cool containers for the spruce essence and molasses to metal poles you use over the fire pit to hang the pot from, I love it.
Hm.. I'm thinking about trying it out myself. But in Sweden we mostly have picea abies, wich I would guess is the case in Soumi too, but the frontier beer prefers the black spruce, picea mariana. I wonder if there is a big difference between the spruces tastewise?
Washington added one last imput to the rasions and that was an equlivicate to a grog, yes grog of whisky for his men every night. He said I won't command my troops into battle away from family and comfort if you don't approve these measures for my men. He's an old relative of mine,we all have bad teeth too. The apple don't fall far from the tree, huh! Great videos.
I just steeped some black spruce and am enjoying the tea for the first time since learning to identify the tree AFTER seeing this video. Thank you Mr T! Inspirational. God bless yous. 💚-A in Michigan
I always use Norway spruce. I don't know how common it is in North America, but here in Sweden it is everywhere and you can of course use it in different things - not just for drinks. Add tips raw to salads, puree them for contrast in desserts or pickle them and add them in.. whatever, really. The one key is not to cook them as they both taste worse and lose all the appealing color (turning from a vibrant green to a dreary brown).
Looks great. I remember my grandparents mention they made spruce lung remedy. Fresh spring new growths were covered with sugar. It released liquid and was used as a sirup for cough. I have no idea how effective it was. It was for a family member suffering from "weak lungs" as they called it. Well, by the description it sounded like asthma. But getting a doctor in the WWII period in rural areas was not easy.
@@fartkerson No. They dont give you anything with cheesesteaks. They put the onions and cheese in the cheesesteak and thats it. And jellybeans are not raw. They cook them and the outside is crunchy but the inside is gooey. I saw a video on how they make them so i know. The best kind is jelly belly and you can get the huge can of them at costco.
The reason beers were such a major part of our history is because no known human pathogens can survive the fermentation process. Source: one time head brewer at a microbrewery and beer historian.
its isn't purely the fermentation- its the boiling of the wort. In a time where water was full of pathogens, it was the boiling of the liquids, followed by the alcohol residual that kept it safe to drink. Back in the colonial days, it was even common place for schools to have apple cider for hydration for the kids, rather than water. (cider as in the fermented kind.). John Adams drank a gallon every day (and he lived into his 80's... must have been doing something correct!)
@@lancehobbs8012 It is the fermentation process that kills the pathogens. Do you really think boiling the wort had anything to do with the sanitation of the fermentation vessels, which historically were porous wooden vessels? Re used over and over many many times. Fermentation kills all known human pathogens in beer. It may taste horrible, but it won't make you ill. Source: Siebel Institute Master Brewer program graduate. If you wanna argue fermented grain or honey beverages, I'm here all day.
If you ever find yourself in Eastern Canada or more specifically Halifax around Christmas there is a brewery there Called the Garrison Brewing Co that make spruce needle beer during the month of December. There is nothing quite like it
When I was volunteering at the Explore Park in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia at the 1750's Fort VAuse compound, the fellow who ran the place made some spruce beer based up on a recipe in "The Packet, vol. 1". It was from an 18th century recipe and called for the use of molasses but NOT "Black Strap Molasses" because that was way too strong and overpowered everything. From the batch that he made, he gave me three 20-oz. bottles of it. Two of the bottles had little if any carbonation but tasted OK. The third bottle carbonated just great and it was a very tasty Spruce Beer. The carbonation comes from the residual yeast eating the remaining sugars in the beer., turning it into Co2. We don't add sugar in the typical 1 hour boil of the wort for "normal beer" or the fermentation of it because the grains used are primarily barley and we've already extracted the fermentable sugars from the barley either by mashing the grain (soaking for about an hour at 150° to 154°) or by buying liquid or powdered extract of them. At the end of the fermentation, you have all the alcohol your beer's going to have but basically it tastes like flat beer. You have to give the residual yeast more sugar to eat to make the carbonation, so we add it to wort before we bottle it. Then time takes care of the rest. With modern methods, after typically 2-weeks of fermentation, there is not enough sugar left to carbonate the beer. It has all been converted to alcohol by the original yeast used to brew it. So, we add some sugar to the wort and carefully stir it in avoiding splashing the wort. Then we bottle it and typically wait for 2-weeks for the beer to get well- carbonated. I made one batch of a clone of the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and it took only 1-week to reach its carbonation level,. but that's unusual. On the other hand I have made some stouts that took 4 weeks of "bottle conditioning" to reach carbonation levels and to get to the proper taste. Did one stout that I though I was going to have to throw out after 2-weeks of bottle conditioning because it had very little carbonation and the taste just wasn't there - I wouldn't drink it. After 3-weeks, the carbonation and taste had improved to the point that I knew I wouldn't have to throw it out, and after 4-weeks It was easily as good as anything available commercially. But 2-weeks is the common amount of time needed both for fermenting your beer and then another 2-weeks for bottle conditioning it. One other note real quick. You have to be a little careful about yeast. Most yeast cannot handle "blood temperatures", which are in the 90° range. Most of the ale yeasts work fine between about as cold as 62° or as high as 72°. So you nomrally want to cool your wort down to ~70° before pitching your yeast in. If you pitch most yeasts into wort that is 95° or so, you'll kill the yeast and will got no fermenting at all. There are some fairly new yeasts available now that are from Norway and they can handle temperatures between 62° and 98°. They are actually ancient Norwegian "Kveik" yeasts that have recently become widely available.
"Spruce' isn't just a tree-it's a historical name for Prussia. 'Spruce leather', a product of the region, was popular among the fashionable set, and by the end of the 1500s, 'spruce' was used to describe anyone fashionable or neat in appearance." -Merriam-Webster's website
Hello, thank you for this great recipe. Although I „slightly“ changed it. I am very often in the woods and so I do know what spruce tea is. Just boil some spruce little twigs in hot water. But in my area there are many pine woods so I mostly put them into the water. In this case I changed the spruce beer into a pine beer and even changed the maple syrup to some sugar beet syrup. It‘s more common here living in middle europe and it‘s cheaper by the way. The normal yeast I use for my selfmade mead is bordeaux yeast and the fact I had some yeast left helped me in my decision what to put in. So after all it‘s not a spruce beer anymore but furthermore a local variant of it. The taste is wonderful and I‘m sipping it right now typing this. Although I have no comparison to your true spruce beer it‘s delicious and I wonder if this could be better in any way? So again, thank you for sharing your knowledge in a kind manner. Cheers!
This reminds me of every time I read the comment section of a recipe online there's always a few that go something like "Oh I loved your recipe! I made it and my entire family loves it so much there were no leftovers! The only thing is I added oat milk instead of regular milk for the batter, and I didn't add any garlic or pepper or salt, but added soy sauce instead. And I substituted turkey breast for the flank steak since we try to stay away from red meat. And I added cream of mushroom soup instead of broth. It was so good. Thank you for the recipe!" LOL
I am currently drinking a batch of pine needle and sage tea, not fermented but kegged with CO2 for carbonation. It looks like beer, but isn't. Very good!
Proving once more that RU-vid is superior to any kind of studio broadcast TV crap. You know why? Because to them it's just a business. This guy Townsend, you can tell with every word he's saying that he's doing this 100% for the love of it.
As a home brewer / cook, go ahead and use maple syrup ... the flavour all but disappears. In fact, the great difficulty in brewing is maintaining that fragile maple syrup flavour.
Hello from Denmark. We use spruce as christmas trees and there is a famous christmas carol that talks about eating the tree. For so long i thought that made no sense. Now i im a little wiser thanks to this video. Thank you and have a nice day.
@@boiiboii6310 um, yeah, European stole the Constitution from the Haudaunasanee, Iroquois six nations, except they changed the mother clan leaders to men and denied women the right to govern themselves and own land.
From a brewmaster in British Columbia here; great video! I regularly make a spruce tip beer. The spruce are sustainably spring picked (new), then frozen for a minimum of 17 days, to kill any spoiling microbes, I then add it to a beer after it's finished fermenting. This way, 2 things happen, the vitamin c is retained, but mostly, boiled spruce is more piney in flavour, whereas spruce added to the a beer post boil retains more of a sweet fruity note reminiscent of maple syrup.
Patrick Glaser - the left seem to be hell bent on anti self reliance and self sustainability. Doing away with history and culture around the world so as to usher in this “borderless United citizen utopia”.
Soldiers back then: "I say, mashed peas, beef cutlet, and beer again? Is there no variety in these military rations?" Soldiers now *We out here eating CrAyOnS*
So true - also I'm super impressed with Jon's ability to make long cuts, as it's super challenging to deliver stuff without seeming to make much effort, but not screw up!
Your videos on colonial beers and foods are the most interesting. I'd never heard of spruce beer before. Thank you for the information & education you provide
When I was in Boy Scouts we went to Virginia and visited a historic fort there. One of the demonstrations was someone making Spruce Tea and everyone in my troop loved it, especially this one second year. He loved it so much that on our next camp out he made "Spruce" tea every day all weekend. Well come late Saturday night the kid got horribly horribly sick, he was vomiting basically nonstop. It was so bad we needed to call an ambulance and he got talken to the hospital. Turns out the "spruce" he was drinking was juniper.
Native Americans: Here have this medicinal drink that will stop you from getting scurvy. Europeans: Can it be beer? Native Americans: Well yeah but it'll negate the medicinal properties of the.... Europeans: LETS GET FOOKED!!!!!
When my pappaw was teaching to make applejack and moonshine when I was a child, he told me the only measures I needed to remember is "a pints a pound the world around".
One hiking trip I did during the winter, I went full old school. I made spruce tea for everyone on the hike (didn't boil the spruce, we did a steep method) and made a bed out of spruce close to the fire with a log backstop behind me to reflect the heat. Best sleep ever...in my life... Sleeping under the stars when it's that cold out, but your toasty on a spuce bed. 10 out of 10 would do it again.
@@jkcarroll Poison hemlock is an entirely different plant than the hemlock tree. That said, I've never been able to bring myself to try anything with hemlock because I'm too scared.
Yards Brewing Company in Philadelphia brews a spruce beer, which they describe as brewed according to a recipe that Ben Franklin had. It is a proper ale, though, brewed from barley malt but with spruce tips added.
Great video to randomly stumble on! I live on Canada's west coast and history tells us the british navy/explorers did the same thing, but with Sitka spruce. That spruce is up the coast from where I am, but I found a few spruce trees near me but all I can tell you is they are not blue. Anyway, have been making spruce tip beer for four years now. It is a regular whole grain home brew setup. I really want to try that maple syrup recipe though Eh! My best advice for a spruce tip whole grain beer is keep it simple. Take an old school ipa recipe and add spruce additions in with you hops. Total spruce additions should be kept to 1 to 2 ounces per gallon. Divided up your additions as you wish. My last batch I just threw all the spruce in at 5 minutes left of the boil. Smells amazing, bottling soon!
I just want to say thank you, you are a Gem sir, I genuinely get happy everytime I get a notification from your channel. my favorite was your pemiccan video from four years ago, I intend to watch them all lol.
