Known to northern peoples since beer was first brewed, spruce beer has been a source of comfort and nutrition, allowing easy, and tasty, access to crucial vitamins thanks to the inclusion of spruce tips in the brewing process. We added Colorado Blue Spruce tips late in the boil to bring out the essential oils that flavour the beer and give it a nutritional punch. Versions of this brew have helped ward off scurvy, keeping sailors, hunters, and explorers alive, including Captain Cook himself. If you need a beer to keep you alive, Cranshaw’s your boy. Thanks to its unique ingredients, this beer unsurprisingly features a resinous, piney taste that is both crisp and fortifying. The Blue Spruce is noticeable both on the nose and the flavour of the beer, but thanks to the properties of this additive, it doesn’t linger on the finish. With a low IBU rating, it balances an herbal quality with only subtle fruity notes that are more common in IPAs. Not as dark as some spruce beers, ranking an 11 on the SRM (at 40, the beer is black). This means it has an amber colour, darker than a golden pale ale, but not so much as a brown ale.