If you've chewed regular gum your whole life and you're about to try spruce gum for the first time, I need to warn you about something.

Do not expect regular gum.

Seriously.

They both get called chewing gum. They both give your mouth something to chew. That's about where the obvious similarities end.

Spruce gum isn't a minty stick of conventional gum with a little forest flavour added to it.

The resin is the gum.

That changes the taste, texture, ingredients, sweetness, learning curve and even how long you can keep a piece around.

I spent most of my life chewing regular gum, so I understand the expectation. But after chewing spruce gum all the time now, conventional gum feels completely different to me.

Soft. Squishy. Weirdly smooth.

Spruce gum is its own thing.

Spruce Gum vs Regular Chewing Gum at a Glance

What Does Spruce Gum Taste Like?

This might be the hardest question to answer for somebody who has never chewed tree resin.

It tastes like spruce resin.

Helpful, I know.

The flavour is foresty, resinous and unmistakably different from conventional flavoured gum. Depending on the resin and the piece, the first flavour can be stronger and then settle as you continue chewing.

There is no sugar coating it — literally.

Our gum isn't sweetened.

If you're expecting peppermint candy, you're going to be confused.

For some people, the first piece is an immediate oh wow, I love this.

For others, it takes a little time for their brain to stop expecting commercial chewing gum.

The Texture Is Probably the Biggest Difference

Commercial chewing gum has trained us to expect instant softness.

You unwrap it, put it in your mouth and start chewing.

Spruce gum can make you work a little harder.

Some batches are relatively easy from the beginning. Others can start very hard. Some are brittle. Some crumble into several little pieces before they warm and begin coming together.

And this is important:

That does not automatically mean something is wrong with the gum.

Many of our batches over the years have been harder or more crumbly, and longtime customers learned what we call the art of the chew.

You warm it.

You work it gently.

If it fragments, you gather the pieces together with your tongue.

You give the resin time.

Then that stubborn little collection of hard pieces can suddenly become a cohesive chew.

We have an entire guide explaining why spruce gum can shatter or crumble, because the texture of real resin deserves more explanation than “just chew it.”

Why Isn't Every Piece Identical?

Trees aren't factories.

Ron and I can sort resin, process it, select material for chewing, test batches and intentionally balance spruce with a small amount of pine.

What we cannot do is make every spruce tree produce chemically identical resin.

We've harvested spruce resin that was deep red and hard enough to snap.

We've harvested resin that was incredibly soft.

We've worked with batches that practically cooperated from the beginning and others that made us earn the finished chew.

That's part of working with a wild-harvested material.

If your priority is having every piece behave exactly like the one before it, conventional chewing gum is exceptionally good at that.

If part of what interests you is chewing an actual natural resin, variation comes with the territory.

What Is Actually in Spruce Gum?

Our ingredient list is pretty uneventful.

Primarily wild-harvested spruce resin, with a small amount of pine resin added for elasticity.

That's it.

No added sugar. No aspartame. No xylitol. No synthetic gum base. No artificial flavouring.

Conventional chewing gum is built differently. It generally starts with a formulated gum base and can include sweeteners, flavours, softeners and other ingredients depending on the particular product.

If you want the much nerdier version of that subject, read What Is Gum Base? What's Actually in the Gum You Chew?

And if you're specifically wondering about synthetic polymers in modern gum base, we covered that separately in Is Chewing Gum Plastic?

Spruce Gum Isn't Sweet

This deserves its own section because sweetness is so deeply connected to what most of us think gum is supposed to taste like.

Commercial gum is usually sweet.

Spruce gum isn't.

There isn't a burst of sugar or sweetener when it hits your tongue.

There isn't a fruit centre.

There isn't a coating designed to make the first thirty seconds taste like candy.

You're tasting the resin itself.

For people deliberately trying to get away from sweetened gum, that's often part of the appeal.

But if what you actually want is a sweet treat, spruce gum probably isn't going to magically become one because it came in a tin.

How Long Does the Flavour Last?

Spruce gum doesn't behave like a piece of mint gum where the big question is how long the mint stays strong.

The resinous flavour can change as you chew it. The initial intensity can settle, while the piece itself can remain chewable far beyond that first flavour experience.

And many spruce-gum chewers don't throw the piece away after one session.

They save it.

Then they chew it again.

We've had customers use the same piece over multiple days, and I've got used pieces of gum kicking around everywhere — including in the car — because I'll pick one back up and chew it again later.

There isn't one honest number of hours I can promise every person. Piece size, chewing style, how often you chew and whether you reuse the same piece all change the answer.

That's why we wrote a separate guide to how long spruce gum lasts and re-chewing the same piece.

Is Spruce Gum Harder to Chew?

It can be.

Especially at the beginning.

A hard piece needs to warm up, and some batches have a substantially firmer chew than conventional gum.

That is one reason I don't want somebody taking a big cold piece, immediately clamping down on it with their molars and then deciding spruce gum is impossible.

Start small.

Warm it.

Learn what the resin does.

Once it comes together, the experience is very different from that first hard little chunk.

Our complete beginner's guide to chewing spruce gum is where I'd send anyone before their first piece.

Who Probably Won't Like Spruce Gum?

I'm not going to pretend this product is for everybody.

If you want gum that is instantly soft, consistently sweet, strongly flavoured and exactly the same every single time, you may prefer conventional gum.

If the thought of tasting actual tree resin sounds horrible to you, spruce gum probably isn't going to change its entire personality to win you over.

And if you absolutely do not want a learning curve, a hard batch may drive you nuts.

That's okay.

I would rather somebody know what they're buying than order spruce gum expecting spearmint bubble gum and wonder what on earth we sent them.

Who Tends to “Get” Spruce Gum?

The people who really love it tend to understand what it is.

They're looking for the resin.

They like a firmer chew.

They appreciate the simple ingredients.

They don't mind learning how to work a harder piece.

They may like that a piece can be saved and chewed again rather than automatically being tossed once the flavour blast disappears.

And a lot of people are simply fascinated by the fact that humans were chewing materials from trees long before modern chewing gum existed.

Once you understand what you're holding, spruce gum makes a lot more sense.

Which One Do I Prefer?

Spruce gum.

By a mile.

Again, I say that as someone who used to love regular gum.

But now I know exactly what I like about the chew: I like the firmness. I like the resin flavour. I like being able to pick an old piece back up. I like knowing what the chewing material actually is.

Most of all, I like knowing where ours came from.

When I say our gum is wild-harvested, I don't mean we bought “wild” ingredients from a supplier.

Ron and I harvested the resin.

We were there.

And after years of working with this material, that's the kind of gum I want sitting in my mouth.

What Should You Expect From Your First Piece?

Expect it to be different.

That's probably the most useful advice I can give you.

Don't judge it by whether it successfully impersonates commercial gum.

Start small. Give a hard piece time to warm. Expect resin rather than sweetness. Expect natural variation. And if it crumbles at first, remember that the chew may still be forming.

Then decide whether you actually like spruce gum.

Not whether it behaves like something it was never supposed to be.