Harpoon's "Vermont Spruce Tip" Ale Made from Vermont State Forest Spruce Tips!
Norway spruce tips Harpoon Brewery 's, Tom Graham, recently created a specialty beer for the fall/winter season named Vermont Spruce Tip Ale using spruce buds harvested from Downer State Forest in Sharon, VT (Vermont's second state forest). Drawing his inspiration from the book, The Homebrewer's Garden , Tom sought out the help of State Forester, Tim Morton who knew just the right place to harvest the beer's main ingredient, young spruce tips. Downer State Forest has a large stand of Norway spruce that hides an understory of spruce saplings. These young evergreens offer easy-to-pick tips or buds. "Harvested at their tender, ripe, bright green peak, the spruce tips impart citrus, pine, spice, herbal and earthy notes" (from Harpoon's website, a description of Vermont Spruce Tip Ale). For the amount of beer that Harpoon wanted to produce, 200 lbs of spruce tips were needed. The process was tricky with only a two-week window for harvesting the tips....