I have to preface this by apologizing. I’m sorry for not getting this up sooner. I’ve been writing this website for years, and although I have a spruce tip syrup that tastes like spruce, it’s not the most powerful one you can make–it’s a hybrid, a shortcut.
That older recipe of mine was back from when I had bartenders breathing down my neck about running out of spruce tip syrup for the bar, and, in 24 hours, it’s a pretty good approximation of the real thing, and handy in a pinch. But it’s still an approximation.
This is the real deal, the old fashioned, time honored traditional syrup that most people, especially those who have family from Eastern Europe will recognize. There’s two ingredients, well three actually: spruce tips, sugar, and time. Like I mentioned with my shortcut spruce syrup, you can get some good flavor from the tips overnight using my other recipe, but, the slow, steady maceration of the sugar and spruce tips, and the concentration of aromatic compounds that gets trapped in the jar (along with wild yeast–be sure to burp the jars occasionally) is really potent, in a delicious way.
There’s icing on the cake too, in that there’s zero tannins. Zip. Zilch. Zero. If you’ve ever tasted a pine cone, or eaten something like the Georgian preserve varenye, you’ll know eating pine cones can be a resinous, mouth drying experience. (More on general cooking with spruce tips here).
Oh, and the shelf life. The infusion with the sugar alone is strong enough that it will even hold at room temperature for months, without that much of a noticeable decrease in aroma. I prefer to refrigerate it to keep it bright and zippy, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t forgotten about a jar here and there, then opened them up to be pleasantly surprised after a few months.
The recipe itself, if it can even be called that, is easy enough that a child can make it (and it’s a great thing for kids to make to teach them about edible parts of conifers, along with supplying a dose of vitamin C to prevent scurvy). You take equal parts spruce tips and sugar–no weight measurements, no finicky scales, and mix them together, put them in a jar, let them sit in the sun for a couple months, then heat, strain, and voila–syrup that tastes like the soul of a spruce tree.
48 hours after mixing, the sugar will draw out moisture from the spruce tips. Over time, they’ll be nearly covered by syrup. The discoloration here is what happens if you use frozen tips, it doesn’t affect the flavor.
No white sugar
It might surprise you (as it did me) but the type of sugar is really important here. Originally I almost wrote this method off as a technique, since I’d put jars and jars up of spruce tips and sugar at the restaurant, only to be left with a syrup that was just ok. Over the years I’ve watched more than one chef make the exact same mistake. We assume that white sugar would be better, maybe cleaner somehow, but it isn’t.
The secret is all about harnessing aromas, moreso, giving aromas a place to go. Aromas like spruce are very water soluble. The magic happens when the natural moisture from the spruce tips seeps into the sugar, making a watery slurry which can absorb aromas better than a thick mat of sugar. Brown or organic sugar are what you want here for two reasons: 1, the color of the finished syrup is more attractive. 2. Brown sugar contains more moisture than white, and more moisture, means a more aromatic syrup. Makes sense, right?
You can make blends using pine cones and spruce tips for an interesting flavor combo. Other conifer parts (young male cones) can also be used.
How I use it
No rocket science here. This is a sweet syrup, perfect in place of maple syrup on pancakes or anywhere you’d use maple, but also good with other things with it’s sharp piney aroma. Here’s a few examples of how I’d it.
- With cheese. Soft cheese, especially goat cheese, loves the piney kick of spruce syrup, maple on the other hand, might be a little bland.
- Drizzled on crepes filled with berries and cream cheese (an old brunch dish I used to run worth revisiting).
- With thick yogurt. I often eat a bowl of granola and thick greek yogurt for breakfast, and drizzling on some spruce syrup, along with a handful of berries makes for a great meal.
- As a glaze for meats. Think ham, etc. A tablespoon per 1.5 lbs or so meat like fatty ground pork can make a nice breakfast sausage too.
- Lining flan molds. Sometimes I’ll add a drizzle of honey to the molds of a panna cotta or flan instead of caramel, and spruce syrup works just as good, it will turn into a natural sauce when the custard is unmolded.
- Beverage sweetener. Think lemonade, drinks, etc.
- Tossed with unsweetened, fresh fruit instead of sugar. Sometimes for dessert I might want just some fresh raspberries tossed with sugar and a dollop of whipped cream. Fresh berries tossed with spruce syrup will eventually give up some of their own juice and make a sort of natural sauce.
Not a 1:1 sugar substitute
Spruce tip syrup is some sweet stuff, and over the years I’ve seen a couple friends of mine make some very, very sweet desserts (by mistake) using it. While it might be tempting to say, flavor some ice cream with it, it can be difficult to get it right. Don’t use it as a 1:1 substitute for sugar as it’s more sweet. Mostly, think drizzle.
Another option: Vacuum sealed syrup
A jar with sugar and spruce tips is the old way, and it’s a good one, but for those of you who have vacuum sealers, know that you can do the same thing sealed in a bag. The benefit of this method is that there’s no glass and pressure to worry about as the mixture ferments, the drawback being that it can be a little more awkward to pour from, and some people eschew plastic.
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- Vacuum sealing is another option for making syrup if you don’t want to baby a jar.
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- This batch I made with pine cones. Be warned, pine cones add more liquid to syrup, and also contain natural yeast that will ferment, making it so you may have to snip the corner of a bag and re seal here and there.
The mixture below was a version with a number of different local herbs, including young pine cones, which are pretty popular in some groups. Before you go making your own franken-syrup though, I’d urge you to make the simple spruce syrup outlined in this post. I’ve made a lot of variations on conifer syrups, and other things, and the jist is anyone can take a bunch of random things, mix them in a jar and call it forest syrup, but, that doesn’t mean the end product will be something you like.
Personally I like to keep the syrups pure, so I can taste the base ingredient. My advice is to keep it simple at first–less is more. There’s a reason the experimental syrup below doesn’t have a recipe to try that I like, yet.
Using Pine Tips
Yes, you can use the young, tender tips of pine trees too, it works out just fine, but has a slightly different, and often more resinous flavor (I’ve only used red pine). You can also use pine cones, but they contain more water in their green stage, which makes the syrup ferment, making it a slightly different product. Pine cone syrup generally tastes much stronger than spruce syrup too. See more about using pine cones specifically in my post on Pine Cone Mugolio Syrup.
Using alternate sweeteners (honey, maple)
After I put up the original recipe here there’s been a number of comments inquiring about using different sweeteners like honey and maple syrup. After testing a few batches I can tell you that, absolutely, it works, and it’s fantastic.
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- Spruce honey.
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- Spruce maple (left) and spruce honey (right) both are excellent alternatives to using conventional sugar.
The ratios are slightly different, and the finished syrup will be a bit looser (especially maple as it contains more water than honey) so you may want to reduce it a bit longer than the traditional syrup, but the flavor is wonderful, and it’s a great alternative to using conventional sugar if you’re trying to not consume too much of it, as many of us are.
Fermented Spruce Tip Syrup
The big difference between Spruce Tip Syrup and Mugolio (pine cone syrup) is that green pine cones contain more water than spruce tips, which allow the mixture to lacto-ferment and develop different flavors. Fermented spruce syrup is good, but is slightly different than the most traditional version I know of I’m sharing here. To make your syrup ferment, add 1/2 cup (4 oz) water to the basic proportions below, or just enough water so that the spruce tips are just barely covered with liquid from the get-go. Anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water will do the trick.
Making Large Batches
I occasionally make very large batches of syrup, 2 or 3 gallons at a time. Here’s a few tips on doing that if it’s something you’re interested in, especially as this is such a fun (also cheap) and interesting thing to give as gifts. The tips below are intended for those people making 1 gallon batches and up at a time.
Foaming
When you bring large quantities of the syrup to a boil, it will begin to froth and foam at the top and will double in size quickly. Don’t worry about skimming at this will settle once the jars cool. After you bring the syrup to a boil and strain, put it back in the pot and bring it to a simmer again, then let it rest for a minute or two so the syrup can settle and return to it’s original volume. If you don’t do this, you run the risk of having jars that are half full after settling.
Pour the syrup into large jars, or, for smaller ones, pour the syrup into a pitcher with a spout, and pour directly into canning jars (4 oz mason jars make a great gift). Fill the jars nearly to the brim, leaving about 1/8 inch headspace, then, working quickly, screw on the lids tight and turn the jars upside down. You don’t have to water bath-process this as it’s basically the same sugar concentration as maple syrup, just make sure your jars are clean. The jars will seal naturally but should be refrigerated after opening.
Classic Spruce Tip Syrup
Equipment
- Mason jars
Ingredients
- 2.5 cups (8oz) Spruce tips
- 2 cups (16 oz) Brown or organic sugar
Instructions
- Combine the spruce tips and sugar and pack into a quart ja, pressing down occasionally to compact the mixture.
- Leave the jar out at room temperature. Some people leave them in the sun, which speeds the process.
- You'll notice the volume of ingredients decrease as the spruce tips release their liquid.
- Keep the jar like this for 1-2 months, or for an oldschool version, bury it in the ground and dig it up the next spring. Stir the jars occasionally, pressing the tips down to keep them under the syrup with a clean spoon.
To make the syrup
- After the initial maceration (aging with sugar) pour and scrape the spruce-sugar slush into a pot.
- Bring the mixture to a boil to dissolve the sugar, strain, then bottle and store. Discard the spent tips, and thank them for their service.
- If for some reason, your syrup is a bit thick after cooling (over-reducing can stiffen or crystalize in the fridge) warm it back up and carefully adjust the consistency by adding a touch of water.
Storing the finished syrup
- Store the finished syrup in the fridge. To preserve it long term (it's totally safe as it's basically all sugar) pour it boiling hot into a jar nearly to the brim, turn upside down and allow to seal, or process in a water bath in mason jars. If held at room temp after opening mold may form on the top, but it can always be re-boiled and refrigerated. This is super sturdy stuff.
Video
Notes
The syrup is shelf stable and safe as-is, but if you want to preserve it in jars at room temperature, boil it, then pour into jars, turn them upside down, and wait for them to seal. You can also just store it in the fridge. If you store it at room temperature, the flavor will slowly diminish over time. Spruce Honey or Maple Syrup If you want to make this with honey or maple syrup, use the below proportions and proceed as directed. The mixture will ferment as there is a higher water content, which is fine.
- 3 oz (90g) 1 generous cup spruce tips
- 1 lb (1.3 cups) honey or maple syrup
Have you ever tried using the infused sugar in something other than the syrup? I’m trying to figure out how best to infuse it in either a fat or in sugar to use in a recipe. If I infuse it in fat, though, it needs to be heated since the fat I’m using is solid at room temperature (cocoa butter). That makes me think infusing the tips in the sugar like you did here might be the better path.
The sugar naturally becomes syrup. If that isn’t clear from the post I need to put up some process photos. The only way to get the flavor of spruce into fat is to use dried needles. I have a video online showing how to make a brine for ham with them if you’re interested.
I’m interested in that brine! You got a link for it?
Also, does the outside air temperature or sun exposure affect the process at all? I live in SE Alaska and we don’t get much sun or heat here right now, so I’m curious how it will do on my porch for two months without those factors.
It’s fine. Keep it on a porch where some sun hits it and it has some ambient warmth. Make sure to stir it and keep the tips covered in syrup to prevent mold.
Thanks again for this post and all the info. I wound up adapting it to allow the tips to “marinate” in the sugar, but then strained them out after two months and dried out the sugar to use in chocolate. The flavor is beautiful. Thanks for this post and for updating things as you got questions!
Sounds like a creative way to use the sugar, I’ll have to remember that.
Hi Alan,
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and tasty recipes.
I just tucked my tips into their sugar (with a touch of sea salt) this morning. I have a few process q’s:
1. When do you strain the tips out? How fine a strain?
2. Maceration t? You have listed 30 and 60d separately – is patience rewarded or is this a typo?
Tucking ramp butter under the skin of a roast chicken tonight and beginning to collect things in jars – there’s something so grounding about squirrelling away and honouring nourishing food. Your work is much appreciated 🙂
I adjusted everything there, sorry if that was unclear. Yes, patience is rewarded here, but 1 month will still give you a decent infusion.
Thanks Alan! The testing tastes of the infusing syrup are delicious and surprisingly complex!
Just to clarify, in the initial few days in the sun without water the spruce tips and sugar are in a *sealed airtight* jar?
And the recipe continues to be in a sealed airtight jar for the month following the addition of liquid while it sits in the sun?
Yes.
I made a few liters of spruce-tip infused vodka this season & it was outstanding – but I’m thinking next year I’ll save myself some $$$ and just make a bunch of syrup instead! Thanks for the recipe, I love your site. Made lobster cakes last night & just put up a batch of lobster pickles using a modified version of your hen brine. Waiting for the hericium to start popping here in Vermont so I can tuck into your mock crab cakes!
Alan, do you know anything about the science of the safety of this type of preserving? I’m having a difficult time finding info to help me understand WHY it’s safe. I’ve got a jar of this I patiently left outside for months. I’m ready to enjoy it, but I can’t convince myself to go ahead and eat it because I just don’t understand why it wouldn’t be a great home for something like botulism. I guess the pH is fairly low, is that all there is to it? I’m interested in getting to know how these now less-common food preservation methods work.
“Sugar” is a preservative.
As beekeepers, we have lots of honey, and I preserve/ferment/pickle lots of things in honey such as cranberries, baby ginger, baby turmeric (both of which I grow in the garden), green (i.e. immature) seeds such as fennel. I need to remember to collect spruce tips i the spring and try it with honey.
Sylvie, that’s just a fantastic idea, and I’m kinda jealous I never thought of it myself. I love mugolio and spruce syrup (the former is the same thing made with pine cones) but whenever I can, I like to use all-natural sugars instead of commercial ones. It would be exciting too, especially the pine cones version..the fermentation would be something to watch with popcorn after a couple days knowing how honey reacts, I’d think it could be one of the few natural yeast combos that could break the thick glass of a solid growler, etc.
Alan: oh yeah, it definitively will ferment, but there is SO much honey compared to the produce, that is not a problem… it’s not mead… but still I watch my jars. I have never used pine cones but blogs like yours (and Pascal Baudar’s) are pushing me to it. They sound most intriguing – I love those unusual tastes! When fermenting citrus or cranberries, or ginger in honey, one ends up with this lovely (color-wise and taste-wise) syrup, and lightly “candied” fruit. Perfect to serve with pancakes or crepes, a simple pound cake, cheese cake, Greek yogurt, roasted beets or roasted carrots, or quails or ducks Etc etc. Anyway, get to know a good beekeeper, one who takes care of her bees fairly “naturally” (it’s not all truly possible anymore, but there is a sliding scale of less chemicals vs. more chemicals and even antibiotics) and produces raw honey. They might even have quasi-varietals if they harvest and batch based on bloom times. We ourselves track each jar we sell back to a particular apiary (or even a specific hive within the apiary) and date harvested (which we can then correlate to what nectar is likely in the jar) Anyway, good honey is AMAZING! If your beekeeper is anything like us, they’ll gladly trade you. We trade honey for quails, or duck eggs, bread, chocolate… 🙂
I would have commented sooner, I just wasn’t sure if this page was still active. Thanks so much for this recipe. It was such an amazing experience, from the start, to my final product. Long story short, July 2020 I put 1.4kg of spruce tips from my mom’s farm into 1.4kg of awesome brown sugar. After a few months in the sun, the bugs (bacteria/yeast) on the spruce tips fermented the liquid. What was left after that stage was thin, not overly sweet, with a hint of mollasses, slightly sour and citrusy liquid – aka spruce juice. On it’s own, it tasted mindblowing, everyone loved it. I used almost off of the liquid to make a syrup, which also was incredible, which people also loved!
All the syrup went into a fermenting batch of Belgian Dubbel. Weeks later I remembered I had a small jar of the uncooked fermented spruce juice, so I added it to the still fermenting beer. Months later I returned, possibly Oct, and the spruce juice had wild-fermented the beer, turning the base Belgian Dubbel into a sprucey, citrusy and slight toffee, very dry and very tart wild fermented sour beer! I should be getting judging feedback from this next month.
This was very unexpected, and was pleasantly surprising no matter what stage this project was in, and best of all it was very easy to do. I expect that myself, and most of my homebrewing friends here in Canada will be harvesting spruce tip this spring in order to do more experiments! I am interested to know if the wild yeast/bacteria always will ferment the liquid during the first phase, or if it was due to my specific batch of spruce tips. I would be interested to know if you get fermentation in your batches. Also, have you done this with mature spruce tips?
Thanks again Alan, I will keep an eye out for your book this summer!
Hey Paul. Super exciting about the sour Dubbel, that sounds delicious. What I suspect happened here is that the spruce tips fermented because there was excess water from the sugar. For the classic syrup, you don’t use equal parts by weight, but by volume, and it seems to work the best.
I’ve done both versions, but I prefer the flavor of the non-fermented spruce syrup. Pine cone syrup or mugolio, which is made the same way, will always ferment as pine cones contain more water than spruce tips. With pine cones, the fermentation is vigorous, and a bit exciting. Both methods are completely safe, especially since they’re boiled afterward, which would kill any nasty bacteria, but the fermented syrup definitely has a lower pH, to be certain.
The typical spruce tip syrup doesn’t ferment, but I suspect is kept safe by the resinous quality of the tips, or maybe the high amount of vitamin C, or natural acidity, as It’s a pine product, this is speculative, but well intended, (super scientific, I know). You can make similar things with mature needles, but you need to break them up really well in order for it to work. Here’s two links here that might be helpful for you. Thanks for commenting. Alan
https://foragerchef.com/mugolio-pine-cone-syrup/
https://foragerchef.com/spruce-ham/
Thanks for the tips! I will definately try to do one batch equal by weight, and one equal by volume, and test the difference.
Like I said, I *assume* that’s the culprit, but feel free to chime back in later in the year. Jealous of that spruce Dubbel!
You can use the spruce tip vodka on sore joints, it works well.
Since this recipe is so high in sugar, could it be canned (water bathed) as i would my regular fruit syrups?
Yes, and I should mention that in the recipe somewhere. Thanks for the reminder.
Thanks for an amazing website with valuable information!
I was wondering if you wash the spruce tips before mixing them with sugar? I’m thinking maybe they shouldn’t be wet..?
Robin, spruce tips are so clean that it isn’t necessary, barring a tree getting splashed with rain water and dirt, but as the branches are rather higher, it’s really a non issue. If you add some water to the syrup in the beginning, say just enough to barely cover them and melt the sugar, the syrup will ferment as it ages, which isn’t necessarily bad, but will result in a slightly different flavor.
Hello again
Thanks for your reply 🙂
I got a bit of mold which I removed and then it came back again, so I decided to give it a boil and put it in a jar after 5 weeks. It’s incredibly delicious, so happy I made this!
I used Demerara sugar. Do you think panela powder would work too?
All the best,
Robin
Hello I love your website! Can you make this with baby pine tips too? Thanks for sharing
Celia, I’m unsure exactly of what you mean by baby pine tips (immature male cones?) but yes, you can really use any young conifer growth here.
Do you have any sense of whether the vitamin C is preserved? At a reasonable level, like rose hip jelly? I wonder if adding pectin would help. Thank you for the article!
Thanks Kathy, I can’t speak to the vitamin C, but as vitamin C is water-soluble and the mixture is boiled it would probably cure scurvy.
Hello, looking forward to making syrup but would like to use monk fruit instead? Any insights on that i.e. ratios or if it even works. Thank you
Hey there, I don’t have any experience using monk fruit so I won’t be much help. I would try making it with spruce tips as intended.
Ok thank you. I am gonna try some with monk fruit and some with coconut sugar, and some with honey to have some syrup if other two experiments are disgusting! Lol!
Hi! I love this idea! I have 3 jars going as of 5.30.21- 2 with spruce tips and 1 with very young pine cones I found on a downed tree on a hike. They have been sitting in a south facing window sealed since then and I checked today and saw some mold at the top of the tips and cones. Should I be concerned about that? Is there a way to avoid them molding, or does it not matter because you boil it eventually? They still smell amazing and not foul or anything. Also, I used dark brown sugar since that has the most moisture. Thank you!
Hi Lori, that can happen sometimes, particularly with the spruce as they don’t contain as much liquid as green pine cones. Don’t worry, it’s totally fine. Try stirring the jars occasionally with a clean spoon. It’s also a non-issue as you’ll be bringing it to a boil. You can add a splash of water to the jars-just enough to allow them to be covered by liquid and that will fix it too, but it will also cause the mixture to lactoferment and give a slightly different (not bad) flavor. I have 6 different species of pine and spruce working right now. All of the spruce tips are still slushy after a month, all the pine cones are swimming freely in liquid.
Oh thank you so much! I’m glad to hear it’s fine. I figured it was, but wanted to be sure. I might have to start another jar before all my spruce tips on my trees get to old! 🙂 So excited for the finished syrup after tasting it with only a week in the jars.
So thankful for this recipe. It’s nuanced to get it just right may take some fine tuning… my question is, once you’ve opened a sealed jar does it need refrigeration? I made some of it too thick and in the refrigerator it gets thicker, almost too viscous to handle. Should I refrigerator anyway or is it safe for some weeks or months at room temp once opened?
Olaf, if it’s too thick you can add a splash of hot water and adjust the consistency to your taste. You can leave it on the counter for a while and it will be fine, just keep an eye on it for mold. It’s pretty bulletproof stuff.
Hello.
Thanks for the recipe! This was my first attempt. I’m just concerned that I did it wrong! When I opened my jars after 40 days or so in the sun, it had a very strange smell, almost moldy, definately not smelling like spruce. Any thoughts? Should I scrap the syrup and try again next year?
Thanks for your reply 🙂
Kahtleen, it should smell very sprucey. Don’t give up. People’s ambient temperatures can vary, also, it helps to stir it occasionally to disperse water while the tips macerate with the sugar. When in doubt, throw it out.
I tried this recipe for the first time this summer and I just finished my syrup about a week ago. I’m delighted with the aroma and flavor. My only problem is that I just realized my syrup crystallized (like honey as it ages) while sitting in the fridge over the past week. Do I need to scrape it out into a pot and boil it again, or just warm it like I would honey? Is it going to keep re-crystallizing? What could I have done to keep it smooth and syrupy? I expect I’ll make more next year and hope to avoid the crystallization problem next time.
You just cooked it a little too much. Warm it, or let it come to room temp, hit it with a splash of water, or just treat as you would honey.