found a recipe for 18th Century version of Spruce beer:
http://beerrecipes.blogspot.com/2007...ruce-beer.html
and a facebook page for it:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Biere-...e/179283110022
last bit - from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_beer
In the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Newfoundland, where it is known in French as bière d'épinette, spruce beer may refer to either an artificially flavored non-alcoholic carbonated soft drink, or to genuine spruce beer