The brewmaster keeping Quebec’s oldest soda alive

I forced myself to love spruce beer before I could reach the counter of the diner Émile Bertrand, the first stomping ground of Montreal’s veteran spruce beer brewmaster Barry Fleischer. I’d sneak sips from my grandfather’s frosted glass while he scarfed down steamies, pretending to love the bitter aftertaste the way I pretended to love black coffee. It made me feel grown up, like I was in on something special. 

For some, that first sip of spruce beer is like a breath of brisk air at the tail end of December. Others equate the historic soda to drinking melted Christmas tree. Most, when asked, fall short of words.

“It’s an acquired taste,” says Barry. “You either love it or you hate it, but you can’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

Barry currently sells two types: the Bertrand, a century-old recipe from Émile Bertrand, a downtown casse-croûte he acquired in the 80s, and a newer version he dreamt up after moving his operation to Paul Patates in the early 2000s. 

You can spot the Pointe-Saint-Charles diner from a mile away, thanks to its bright neon signage, classic metal exterior, and bold red nameplate. Frozen in the 1950s, blue-and-yellow checkered tiles and vintage tin ads cover its walls, decorative jukeboxes line the countertop, there’s a rotary phone by the door, and an ancient gumball machine holds what I can only imagine to be seventy-year-old gumballs.

Like pop in a bottle

The ingredients to spruce beer are simple: water, sugar, yeast, and spruce oil. The secret is in the alchemy of it all. If you aren’t meticulous when brewing this yeast-based beverage, bottles can blow up, fires can start, someone can get hurt. 

“And I did,” Barry refers to the time he sliced his hand open on a shard of glass. In '88, a batch spontaneously combusted, causing a fire in the old restaurant.

"You have to be careful. This stuff is much less stable than regular beer, even if it’s made with the same machinery," Barry warns. "That’s why it’s fizzled out over the years."

Over the counter

Spruce beer dates back more than half a century in Quebec. The Saint Lawrence Iroquoians were the first to discover its medicinal benefits. In 1536, Jacques Cartier arrived and learned of their methods, using the vitamin C-packed cure-all to treat his crew’s scurvy.

The evergreen elixir ping-ponged back to France, where Benjamin Franklin fell in love with and brought the recipe back to the States. According to lore, it was drunk during the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787. Around the same time, a Swedish-Finnish botanist caught wind of the local drink during his voyage to Canada. The recipe he acquired called for twelve gallons of boiling water, “as much as can be held between two hands of leaves and branches,” a vessel, some yeast, and a whole lot of sugar. 

Over the years, everyone weighed in on the 'proper' way to brew spruce beer. Some favoured molasses over sugar, some used copper pots while others used bathtubs, some contained alcohol, while others did not. No matter the proportions or method of mixology, Jane Austen, a dedicated homebrewer, said it best: “the salubrity of spruce beer is universally acknowledged.”

Nonetheless, the piny pop’s roots are firmly planted in Quebec. In 1898, spruce beer's saga would continue at Émile Bertrand. Over a century later, an ambitious businessman named Barry Fleischer would inherit the recipe along with the restaurant. On top of churning out one hundred plus hot dogs a day, Barry promised to keep the legacy alive.

“The recipe came with the store. I just improved on it. I could give you all the ingredients and you could try to make it, but it ain’t gonna come out,” Barry teases.

He explains that fine-tuning his skills took years as the yeast can be quite finicky. The first generation Bertrand is packed with spruce essence, and not overly carbonated. It had its limitations, though, like a one-month shelf life.

Potato, Patate

When Barry’s wife and business partner, Barbara, passed away in 2006, he shut down his diner—a place where the West End Gang left their phones at the door to talk shop, Charles Biddle swung by daily, and Saku Koivu got turned away because Barbara couldn’t didn’t have change for a hundred.

That’s when Barry reached out to Dany Roy, proprietor of Paul Patates, a friterie on Charlevoix that had been around since 1958. “Dany already had his clientele. Most of mine came along, too—the ones that were still alive, anyway,” Barry remarks. “They’re really the same place.”

Once settled at his new restaurant, Barry whipped up his second generation spruce beer Emile. It was sweeter, less piny, and less intimidating. Almost like sprite, according to a teenage frycook at Paul Patates.

Barry has taught Dany everything he knows. After twenty years of tutelage, he feels confident to pass on the torch eventually. Barry doesn’t plan to retire anytime soon. Once finished brewing, he also preps the potatoes for the poutines, makes the meat sauce for the Michigan dogs, and slices the turkey for the clubs, all before nine a.m. He then hits the road to distribute his product, Putter’s pickles, Cott Black Cherry, and other diner staples to Montreal’s most esteemed delis.

After ordering my trio, my eyes were drawn to the article clippings along the side wall of the railroad restaurant, specifically a column from the Gazette circa 1993, which described Barry’s summer thirst quencher as an “extraordinary nectar” with "exemplary opacity.”

Barry tells a story of selling to a guy who had come all the way from France: “I warned him not to bring it on the airplane because it’s very dangerous. Remember it’s made with yeast,” Barry recounts.

“A couple of days later, he sent me two photos in front of the Eiffel Tower, spruce in hand. He had actually brought it back.”

Tastes like teen spirit

Barry Fleischer is a brilliant brewmaster, but he’s also a brilliant businessman. While his OG Bertrand was popular among the Notre-Dame diners and diehards, he recognized it wasn’t for everyone. His second generation brew caught the attention of curious customers and patrons of the Point. Now, he’s currently working on a third-generation product that will put the alcohol-free bevvy back on the map.

“The kids are looking for something that looks like beer, sounds like beer, but isn’t actually beer,” he says.

Barry recognized that there was no better time than now—in an era of <0.5% beers and alcohol-free alternatives—to make the leap from amber glass flip tops to tallboys. By removing the yeast entirely, Barry was able to invent a self-stable product that can survive up to a year, even without refrigeration.

In response to the rising popularity of near beers, Barry is perfecting a sparkling beverage that will appeal to younger generations that are drinking less, just in time for summer. He’s manufacturing it out of a friend’s brewery in St. Hyacinthe. Since the demand for beer has decreased, the machinery was available.

Barry took what a Montreal journalist coined “the best hangover cure since the invention of the guillotine” in the nineties, and came up with a way to avoid hangovers altogether.

“And it still gives you a good buzz,” he jokes.