‘HERESY’ SMALL BATCH DELIGHTS
Spruce on the loose
The Society’s latest small-batch creation is the result of a collaboration with a Perthshire-based brewer and its experiment with a stout flavoured with locally sourced spruce tips. Julien Willems has the scoop on Batch 28 in our ‘Heresy’ series
PHOTOS: DUNCAN GORMAN
The Society’s latest small-batch creation is the result of a collaboration with a Perthshire-based brewer and its experiment with a stout flavoured with locally sourced spruce tips. Julien Willems has the scoop on Batch 28 in our ‘Heresy’ series, Spruce the loose
There, on the local estates surrounding Blair Atholl, brothers Jack and Conall Low of the Wasted Degrees craft brewery were hand-picking spruce tips from the local forest to flavour their new and original stout ale. (Members might remember we wrote about Wasted Degrees in a whisky and beer trip to Pitlochry and Blair Atholl in October 2021)
“We first went information gathering about how to sustainably forage spruce tips,” says Jack. “We’re all about sustainability and building for the future, so that’s the only way we would approach gathering ingredients in the wild.”
The mission was successful enough that the brothers now tap into the bountiful, if short-lived, crop every year, with the sapid spruce shoots entering a new ale recipe every spring. As Jack explains: “There is a lot in common between Wasted Degrees and the Society, including the fact we mainly release different, limited batches of our ales, very much like the Society would release a single cask whisky or a ‘Heresy’ small-batch release.”
PICTURED: Conall Low is a co-founder of Wasted Degrees brewery with his brother Jack
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
As is often the case with everything whisky-related, and this especially holds true when experimenting with casks holding lower alcohol drinks such as ale, time is of the essence, from beginning to end.
“It is an incredibly short window of opportunity if you want to forage the spruce tips at their best, when they are soft, incredibly juicy and citrussy,” says Conall. “After that they get woodier and more bitter, which wouldn’t do the job for flavouring ale.”
But is using spruce tips instead of hops just a gimmick? Where did the idea come from? As I learnt from Conall and Jack, it is still a matter of time, or history. “Hops don’t do well or even grow at all this far north,” says Jack. “So traditionally, and up until the 18th and 19th centuries with hops becoming a lot more available, Scottish brewers did not commonly use hops to flavour their ales.”
But why spruce tips? Isn’t that pushing the boat a bit far? Conall continues: “Many of these flavouring techniques for ales this far north are quite ancient and probably arrived in Scotland with the Vikings,” he says. As the sea raids became more numerous and ambitious, in many places the seafarers traded in their ships and shields for spades and ploughs, settling on the Scottish shores and then further inland.
“Naturally as they settled, they tried to brew ale and must have realised there were a lot of plants here to flavour and preserve the ale that they had and used back home as well,” says Jack.
“Since we have Viking heritage, we were curious about what recipes we could whip up bringing back some of these old flavourings and connect with flavours some distant ancestors might have enjoyed.”
THE CASK CONNECTION
It’s all very well and good, I hear you say, but how did SMWS casks fit into this? It is a lot more straightforward than you might think, for once. As Jack explains: “We have a long-standing relationship with the SMWS, both as long-time members and as a former employee, in my case.
“It felt natural to ask for some used, but still active, casks to rest our stout, and season them in the process. That also meant we could send them back to Euan [Campbell, SMWS head of whisky creation] for him to make something unique with.”
Now is when we get back to our timing conundrum. As soon as Wasted Degrees emptied its Spruce Tip Stout from the casks, the clock started ticking. Lower strength drinks can spoil in barrel, especially if there is only a tiny bit left in the cask. But wasn’t the Spruce Tip Stout reaching a double-digit abv, I hear you ask? Why yes, it certainly towered over most UK ales, at a robust 10.4% abv, but as far as previous cask content for Scotch whisky goes, that’s still on the lower end of things. As a result, the casks were shipped back to our warehouse with some urgency, and in late November 2022, whisky from bourbon casks was transferred to these spruce tip casks. There it remained, soaking the sweetness of the remaining stout and some lovely woody influence for just over 21 months.
EVERYTHING AND MORE!
While following the evolution of these casks periodically, we were taken aback by how big their influence became over a reasonably short maturation period. And ultimately, we decided they could form the backbone of this blended malt. Even with some bourbon casks thrown into the mix to balance things out, the treacly, sticky sweet aspects of the stout still power through and the spruce tips are discernible throughout, with fresh, resinous pine notes and woodland aromas. Moreover, with 16 years’ worth of cask maturation, you’re guaranteed a well-polished, high-quality dram.
Wasted Degrees only brewed a limited amount of Spruce Tip Stout, which means it’s pretty much all gone now, and these exact same vessels can never quite be re-created. So, I for one will certainly indulge in a couple of bottles of this extraordinary whisky from these truly unique casks, one to sip now, one to keep for a day an emergency dose of forest flavours is required to spruce up my day (pun intended). But don’t just take it from me.
Batch 28 will be released in the US in 2025.
I’ll leave you with Jack’s reply as to whether this blended malt was everything he hoped it would be? His words were immediate and unequivocal: “Everything and more!”
