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Birch Beer Syrup (II)
American Birch Beer Extract, 2 ounces; American Sarsaparilla Color, 1 ounce; American Soda Foam, ½ ounce; Simple Syrup, 1 gallon.
This is a fountain formula rather than a domestic recipe: four purchased components stirred together to make a gallon of finished flavoring syrup, to be drawn an ounce or so at a time under carbonated water. Nearly all of the work is in sourcing the parts.
- "American" means a brand, not a styleThe capitalized names look like trade products of a soda supply house, though nothing in the formula itself says so. Any birch beer extract sold for soda work substitutes directly; strength varies, so mix a small test batch before committing a gallon.
- Soda foam is a heading agentFountain foam was typically a solution of quillaia (soapbark) extract, which gives a beer-like head on a carbonated drink. It is still sold as "foam" or "mixer" concentrate by bar and soda suppliers, and it is used at fractions of a percent — half an ounce in 128 is in that range. It contributes little flavor.
- Sarsaparilla color is caramel colorSarsaparilla color was generally a caramel-based coloring, there to take the syrup from pale to root-beer brown. Caramel color, or a very small amount of strong brewed caramel, does the same. Omitting it gives a paler drink; clear "white" birch beer is a real style as well.
- Simple syrup at fountain strengthFountain simple syrup was heavier than a 1:1 syrup: on the order of 2 parts sugar to 1 part water by weight, which is what lets a single ounce sweeten a whole glass. Thin syrup will produce a watery drink at the standard dilution.
- A gallon is 128 fluid ouncesThe flavor load here is about 1.5 percent extract by volume. If you want a smaller batch, scale everything: 1 quart takes ½ ounce extract, ¼ ounce color, and a scant ⅛ ounce foam.
- Serving ratio and yieldThe fountain standard was 1 to 1½ ounces of syrup in an 8-ounce glass, topped with cold carbonated water and stirred once. A gallon therefore makes roughly 85 to 128 drinks. Refrigerated, a syrup this sweet keeps for months.
- Do not carbonate the syrup itselfThe foam agent is meant to meet gas at the glass. Bottling the mixed syrup with sugar and yeast to force a natural carbonation is a different process entirely and not what this formula is for.
Birch beer belongs to the same family of American root-and-bark sodas as sarsaparilla and root beer, and its flavor comes from sweet or black birch, Betula lenta, whose bark and twigs carry methyl salicylate — the same compound that gives wintergreen its character, which is why birch beer and wintergreen taste like cousins. It was originally a home-fermented spring drink in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, said to have been tapped and brewed when the sap ran, and by the time this book was compiled the dispensing fountain had largely displaced the barrel: the flavor arrived as a bottled extract from a supply house, and the soda clerk's job was to blend it with syrup, color and foam to a house formula. That this is version II tells you only that the book carried more than one formula. Commercial birch extracts today are usually built around synthetic methyl salicylate rather than distilled bark, which is both cheaper and easier to standardize — and it is the reason mass-market birch beer tastes more uniform than the regional bottlings that survive in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.