spruce beer

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. A beer made from the leaves and small branches of the spruce-fir, or from the essence of spruce, boiled with sugar or molasses, and fermented with yeast. There are two kinds, the brown and the white, of which the latter is considered the better, as being made with white sugar instead of molasses. Spruce-beer is an agreeable and wholesome beverage, and is useful as an antiscorbutic.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. A kind of beer which is tinctured or flavored with spruce, either by means of the extract or by decoction.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. a brew made by fermenting molasses and other sugars with the sap of spruce trees (sometimes with malt)