Drinking the Forest
Part One: La Bière d’Épinette, the Origin and the Soda
PART ONE
A corner door, angled to face an intersection, opens into the narrow diner Paul Patates, a Montreal institution. It’s a place where customers come to take photos, although it’s a little out of the way in the Pointe-Saint-Charles neighborhood. Three easy-going workers were behind the counter one afternoon. The menu is recalcitrant diner food — hot dogs, fries, poutine, a club sandwich — in large portions set down on paper placemats. Having eaten, I have to say the food isn’t a reason to go. What’s interesting is the house-made bière d’épinette, spruce beer, a kind of soda. It comes in heavy brown glass bottles whose label warns that they should be kept refrigerated at all times. The bubbles inside come from a small alcoholic fermentation. As long as soda contains less than 0.5 percent alcohol, in Quebec it qualifies as non-alcoholic. At Paul Patates, the original version of the spruce beer, called Bertrand, is said to be made according to the 1898 recipe. It’s slightly cloudy and contains water, sugar, yeast, and spruce oil. A newer, sweeter version, called Émile, is less perishable and additionally contains sodium bicarbonate. (I’m not sure why, but it produces bubbles.) When you taste either one, the spruce is so subtle at first that you aren’t sure what the flavor is, and then, as you sip, it builds. The less-sugary original is a good, refreshing drink.
Most of the few other makers of bières d’épinette also use essence; there’s more than one kind of spruce, and the species may vary. About ten years ago,