Usnea Lichen (Old Man Beard)

Spruce On Tap

A freshly harvested blend of Colorado Blue Spruce and Engelmann Spruce tips (new growth). Once harvested, they are immediately vacuum-packed and frozen. Spruce tips are used for brewing, tea making, culinary, herbal and countless other uses. Package sizes available in 4oz bags, 8oz bags, 1lb bags, 2lb bags and 5lb bags. Bulk pricing offered. They are sustainably wild-harvested, American-sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Spruce Tips

Conventional (Non-GMO)

Wild-Harvested

A freshly harvested blend of Rocky Mountain Juniper needles and berries. Once harvested, they are immediately vacuum-packed and frozen. Juniper is used for brewing, distilling, tea making, culinary, herbal and countless other uses. Package sizes available in 4oz bags, 8oz bags, 1lb bags, 2lb bags and 5lb bags. Bulk pricing offered. They are sustainably wild-harvested, American-sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Juniper Berries and Needles

This is a freshly harvested, then immediately frozen, vacuum-packed bag of Ponderosa Pine needles (leaves) for sale, used for brewing, tea making, culinary, herbal and countless other uses. Never dried, never processed, never died or colored. Sustainably wild-harvested off of our property deep in the Rocky Mountains far from any pesticides, chemicals or city acid rain.

This is a frozen, vacuum packed bag of fresh needles (leaves) from the tree. There is very little bark or woody substance, other than what is found at the tip of the needle clusters. Please note that with the sub-species we harvest in our area, it is common to see brow sections or spots on the individual needles. We have tried to detail this in our pictures as much as possible. This is normal growth for the tree and should not be considered an inferior product because of such.    

We do NOT recommend making beer with this needle in the traditional manner of boiling them. Experiments have been successfully made soaking the needles in with the mash at approximately .5 lb / BBL (for moderately light beers) and then removing them. This allows the flavor but the tannic characteristics will not come out because you are not boiling the needles.    

Distillers - we are having an increased interest using these as part of the gin botanical line-up.

The needles are a high source of Vitamin C and are often used in teas and extracts for this reason.

Ponderosa Pine Needles

This is a freshly harvested, and then immediately frozen, 8-ounce vacuum-packed bag of wild sage. It is NOT dehydrated - it is fresh and sustainably wild-harvested in the USA (unlike many wild sage products on the market)!

This is a vacuum packed bag of fresh leaves from the bush. There is very little bark or woody substance, other than what is found between the leaves in the leave clusters.  

Recommended usage for brewing is normally around a quarter of a pound per barrel for Winter Ales, a little less for lighter beers added in the last 15 minutes of the boil or at whirlpool. Making gin? Distillers - we are having a lot of success using the sage for gin botanicals.  This is a great way to use fresh sage that has never been dried and actually wild harvested in America, not from over seas!  

The sagebrush we harvest  is a mixture of Atermisia nova, A. cana & A. tridentata; but primarily A. tridentata.

Wild Sage

This is a freshly harvested, and then immediately frozen in a vacuum-packed bag of Gambel Oak green acorns and caps for sale. It is NOT dehydrated - it is fresh and sustainably wild-harvested in the USA.

Gambel Oaks have much smaller acorns that traditional oaks found throughout the United States. There are approximately 75 acorns in a 4-oz bag. They are pest free and hand gathered sustainably. Note, some caps may separate from the acorns due to packaging. There also may be hints of brown in some areas on the acorn part.

Gambel Oak Green Acorns

This is a vacuum-packed bag of freshly wild-harvested yarrow for sale. It is sustainably wild-harvested,  American sourced, and never dried or dehydrated. This product is harvested per order and then shipped fresh, not frozen. For this reason, please allow up to one week for us to harvest your order and ship it out the following Monday.

Yarrow  (Achillea millefolium) is a popular ingredient in a variety of teas, medicines, perfumes and BEER! In Switzerland yarrow was often used instead of hops when making beer. In the Middle Ages, yarrow was part of a herbal mixture known as gruit used in the flavoring of beer prior to the use of hops.

Yarrow has also been used as a food, and was very popular as a vegetable in the seventeenth century. The younger leaves are said to be a pleasant leaf vegetable when cooked as spinach, or in a soup. Yarrow is sweet with a slight bitter taste. The leaves can also be dried and used as a herb in cooking. Navajo Indians considered it to be a "life medicine", chewed it for toothaches, and poured an infusion into ears for earaches.  In the Middle Ages, witches were said to use yarrow to make incantations.

Yarrow is an aromatic herb offering a bright aroma, often associated with mint, pine and pepper. Other characteristics include lemony and woody. Ours primarily seem to have mint and citrus characteristics with an earthy undertone.

Our Yarrow is wild harvested in the Rocky Mountains in southern Colorado. All products are vacuum sealed and shipped fresh!

We like to use a base pale ale recipe that is light on hops and bitterness and then add 2-4 oz of yarrow in the last 15 minutes of the boil.

Fresh Yarrow

Chokecherries are sustainably wild-harvested,  American-sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

The chokecherry fruit can be used to make jam or syrup, but the bitter nature of the fruit requires sugar to sweeten the preserves.

Chokecherry is also used to craft wine in the western United States, mainly in the Dakotas and Utah, as well as in Manitoba, Canada.

Chokecherries

Rose hips are freshly harvested then immediately frozen in a vacuum-packed bag. They are sustainably wild-harvested, American sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Rose hips are used for herbal teas, jam, jelly, syrup, rose hip soup, beverages, pies, bread, wine, and marmalade. They can also be eaten raw, like a berry, if care is taken to avoid the hairs inside the fruit.

At Spruce On Tap you can trust you will be receiving the finest quality ingredients. As co-founders of Riff Raff Brewing Company and homebrewers and wild-craft lovers for years before going commercial, we know and understand the importance of the quality of the ingredients. We can recommend usage, boil times, addition calculation and dry hopping techniques. We are also able to provide assistance in attaining TTB and FDA approval.

Rose Hips

Rowan Mountain Ash Berries freshly harvested then immediately frozen in a vacuum-packed bag.

Rowan fruit contains sorbic acid, an acid that takes its name from the Latin name of the genus Sorbus. The raw fruit also contain parasorbic acid (about 0.4%-0.7% in the European rowan), which causes indigestion and can lead to kidney damage, but heat treatment (cooking, heat-drying etc.) and, to a lesser extent, freezing, renders it nontoxic by changing it to the benign sorbic acid. They are also usually too astringent to be palatable when raw. Collecting them after first frost (or putting in the freezer) cuts down on the bitter taste as well.

At Spruce On Tap you can trust you will be receiving the finest quality ingredients. As co-founders of Riff Raff Brewing Company and homebrewers and wild-craft lovers for years before going commercial, we know and understand the importance of the quality of the ingredients. We can recommend usage, boil times, addition calculation and dry hopping techniques. We are also able to provide assistance in attaining TTB and FDA approval.

Rowan Mountain Ash Berries

Hawthorn berries freshly harvested then immediately frozen in a vacuum-packed bag. They are sustainably wild-harvested, American sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Please note, these berries are not very "pretty" compared to other berries. They are mealy and bitter, yet high in vitamin C. Expect some stems in with the berries (like you would with cherries).

At Spruce On Tap you can trust you will be receiving the finest quality ingredients. As co-founders of Riff Raff Brewing Company and homebrewers and wild-craft lovers for years before going commercial, we know and understand the importance of the quality of the ingredients. We can recommend usage, boil times, addition calculation and dry hopping techniques. We are also able to provide assistance in attaining TTB and FDA approval.

Hawthorn Berries

We harvest fresh White Fir in Southwest Colorado and then immediately freeze in vacuum-packed bags. They are sustainably wild-harvested, American sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Fir is high in vitamin C and has long been used for teas, tinctures and respiratory support. The needles contain a wide variety of monoterpenes such as α-pinene, β-pinene, limonene, myrcene, camphene, Δ3-carene, and terpinolene, as well as monoterpene alcohols such as α-terpineol, terpinen-4-ol, linalool, citronellol, and fenchyl alcohol. 

Typically fir has more tannic properties than spruce, so depending on what you are making, often honey or other sweetness is preferred to balance the flavors. In brewing, this is why spruce is typically preferred as there is much less pitch carrying the tannins than you find in fir. That said, you can still brew up some pretty amazing recipes! Fir is typically considered more "piney" than spruce. Think pine/citrus with fir, where you get more gentle pine/melon with spruce.

At Spruce On Tap you can trust you will be receiving the finest quality ingredients. As co-founders of Riff Raff Brewing Company and homebrewers and wild-craft lovers for years before going commercial, we know and understand the importance of the quality of the ingredients. We can recommend usage, boil times, addition calculation and dry hopping techniques. We are also able to provide assistance in attaining TTB and FDA approval.

White Fir Tips (Leaves)

We harvest fresh Douglas Fir in Southwest Colorado and then immediately freeze in vacuum-packed bags. They are sustainably wild-harvested, American sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Fir is high in vitamin C and has long been used for teas, tinctures and respiratory support. The needles contain a wide variety of monoterpenes such as α-pinene, β-pinene, limonene, myrcene, camphene, Δ3-carene, and terpinolene, as well as monoterpene alcohols such as α-terpineol, terpinen-4-ol, linalool, citronellol, and fenchyl alcohol. Other Douglas fir constituents include esters and aldehydes. It also offers anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, antimicrobial (bacterial, viral and fungal), expectorant, and sedative properties.

Typically fir has more tannic properties than spruce, so depending on what you are making, often honey or other sweetness is preferred to balance the flavors. In brewing, this is why spruce is typically preferred as there is much less pitch carrying the tannins than you find in fir. That said, you can still brew up some pretty amazing recipes! Fir is typically considered more "piney" than spruce. Think pine/citrus with fir, where you get more gentle pine/melon with spruce.

At Spruce On Tap you can trust you will be receiving the finest quality ingredients. As co-founders of Riff Raff Brewing Company and homebrewers and wild-craft lovers for years before going commercial, we know and understand the importance of the quality of the ingredients. We can recommend usage, boil times, addition calculation and dry hopping techniques. We are also able to provide assistance in attaining TTB and FDA approval.

Douglas Fir Tips (Leaves)

Juniper needles (leaves) freshly harvested and then immediately frozen in a vacuum-packed bag.  They are not dehydrated - they are fresh and sustainably wild-harvested in the US (unlike most juniper products on the market).

There is very little bark or woody substance, other than what is found between the needles in the needle clusters. The Juniper trees that grow native in Colorado are called Rocky Mountain Juniper (Juniperus scopulorum). We have found in all of our research and with our own experimentation at our brewery that when using Rocky Mountain Juniper that you can use the needles alone to produce very similar results as if you only used a needle and berry mix in the brew, though not quite as strong as when you include the berries. 

Recommended usage for brewing is normally around a quarter of a pound per barrel for Winter Ales, a little less for lighter beers. Making gin? Distillers - we are having a lot of success using the juniper needles for gin botanicals.  This is a great way to use fresh juniper that has never been dried and actually wild harvested in America, not from over seas!

Other Uses include food and medicine. Juniper has been documented being used in beverages and tonics since as early as the thirteenth century, where it was said to boil the berries in rainwater to treat stomach pain. Some Plateau Indian tribes boiled an infusion from the needles and inner bark to treat coughs and fevers. The berries were also sometimes boiled into a drink used as a laxative and to treat colds.

Juniper Needles (Leaves)

Fresh, sustainably wild-harvested, American-sourced juniper berries. They are not dehydrated, they are fresh, and they are not from another country (most juniper berries on the market are not from America). Please note that there may be some small amount of stem still attached to the berries. We try to get as much as possible off, but there is always a small amount that sticks to them.

Making gin? Distillers - we are having a lot of success using both the juniper needles and the juniper berries together for your gin botanicals.  This is a great way to use fresh juniper that has never been dried and actually wild harvested in America, not from over seas! 

A Juniper Berry is the female seed cone produced by the various species of juniper trees. It is not a true berry but a cone with unusually fleshy and merged scales, which give it a berry-like appearance. The flavor profile of young, green berries is dominate by a piney, resinous backdrop joined by what some describe as "green-fresh" and citrus notes. The outer scales of the berries are relatively flavorless, so the berries are almost always at least lightly crushed before being used as a spice. They are used both fresh and dried, but their flavor and odor is at their strongest immediately after harvest and decline during drying and storage. We do not dry them. When you order from us they are picked fresh and then immediately vacuum sealed and frozen. Juniper is used to flavor gin, and other juniper-flavored beverages including the Finnish rye-and-juniper beer known as Sahti, which is flavored with both juniper berries and branches.

Juniper Berries (Cones)

Thanks for checking out Spruce On Tap! We recognize there are other suppliers on the market, but here are a few things that make our products stand out over some of the others:

Our products are freshly harvested and then immediately vacuum packed and frozen. Our products are never dried or dehydrated. They taste and smell just like the day they were harvested - fresh!

We always tell you what kind of spruce you are getting. There are over 30 different varieties of spruce. Fir trees can often be confused with spruce (they can look almost identical in some cases) - and you really don't want to accidentally work with fir if you intended to use spruce.

We triple process (check) all of our products to make sure you are getting the highest quality and concentration with the least amount of foreign material.

We own our own brewery. We know the importance of consistent, quality ingredients. We use our own products and hold ourselves to our own standards.

We work closely with the National Forest Service. We are commercially permitted and give seasonal reports back to the forest service detailing forest health. It is only legal to commercially harvest with a permit and ethical to do so because otherwise harvesting can damage forests that are already struggling.

We use commercial grade vacuum packers, commercial-grade BPA free plastics, and walk-in freezers to process and store our products. Everything is temperature-stable and in the freshest environment possible until the day it leaves our shipping facility. We ship all of our products with ice packs, insulation, and express shipping.

These are just a few of the many things that Spruce On Tap brings to the table that other companies cannot. You may pay a little more with us, but you will be getting what you pay for and you will love the end result!

American-sourced, sustainably wild-harvested specialty ingredients for craft beverage and culinary industries

Usnea Lichen (Old Man's Beard) is sustainably wild-harvested, American sourced and never dried or dehydrated.

Usnea is harvested from old trees high in the mountains where it stays cool in the summers. Often used when making cold and cough lozenges, it has also been used as food and as an ingredient in gruit and other ancient drinks. Usnea contains usnic acid, which has a bitter quality.   

Usnea contains a variety of lichen acids and other constituents that work synergistically to promote mucous membrane health and digestive health. In the Middle Ages usnea was used to treat lung disease. Extracts are effective against a wide spectrum of bacteria and fungi.

Usnea has been used for a very long time for teas, tinctures, compresses and poultices.