Spruce Almighty. A name that swings big, the kind that usually means the beer is coasting on the joke. This one is not coasting.

Sourcing the ingredient was apparently the whole conundrum here, since a proper batch needed 75 pounds of spruce tips, which Sookram's tracked down with help from Wildland Foods and the Fireweed Food Co-op. Once the foraging problem got solved, the brewing part reads pretty clean: locally foraged spruce tips laid over a crisp malt backbone, with fresh citrus, soft pine, and herbal spruce mingling against lively hop aromatics, all landing at 5.5% ABV.

A pale ale that tastes like the actual northern landscape it's named for isn't a small claim, but 75 pounds of legwork is the kind of receipt that backs it up.