A new segmented plastic scintillator detector Tuike has been developed for recoil-beta tagging experiments at the Accelerator Laboratory of the University of Jyväskylä. The detector consists of individual plastic scintillator bars arranged in two orthogonal layers, and the scintillation light is detected using silicon photomultipliers. Performance of the new detector was tested using fusion-evaporation reaction 40Ca(36Ar, pn)74Rb, and the results are discussed here. It was found that for beta particles seen in the main silicon detector, Tuike can tag high-energy beta particles with a 48(10)% efficiency. An energy calibration method using Compton edges of gamma ray transitions is described in the present work. Tuike was demonstrated to improve the sensitivity to identify weak fusion-evaporation channels associated with beta decays having high beta end-point energy, enabling nuclear structure studies along the N = Z line.