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Birch Beer Syrup
American Concentrated Birch Beer Syrup, 1 quart; Plain Syrup, 3 quarts. Mix well.
This is a fountain dispensing formula rather than a cooking recipe: a commercial flavor concentrate cut with sugar syrup at 1:3. The whole of it depends on knowing what the two ingredients were.
- Plain syrupIn soda fountain practice "plain syrup" or "simple syrup" meant a heavy sugar syrup, on the order of 2 parts granulated sugar to 1 part water by weight, cooked just enough to dissolve and then cooled. It is far denser than the 1:1 simple syrup used in cocktails, and that high sugar concentration is what discourages fermentation in an open fountain jar.
- YieldOne gallon of finished syrup. At the standard fountain draw of 1 to 1.5 fl oz per glass, that is roughly 85 to 128 servings, which tells you this was written for a shop, not a household. Scale it down as a ratio: 1 part concentrate to 3 parts syrup by volume.
- The concentrate"American Concentrated Birch Beer Syrup" reads as the name of a proprietary extract bought in for the fountain trade, with the strength set by whoever made it. Modern birch beer concentrates and extracts are not standardized to the same strength, so treat the 1:3 dilution as a starting point and taste before committing a large batch.
- Do not substitute essential oilSweet birch oil and wintergreen oil are nearly pure methyl salicylate and are dangerous by the teaspoon; they are not interchangeable with a compounded beverage extract. Use a product sold as a soda or beverage flavoring, measured as such.
- ServingDraw the syrup into the glass first, then add carbonated water under pressure and stir once. Birch beer syrup could likewise be used as the base for a float, or with a little cream added.
- KeepingA heavy syrup like this holds for weeks refrigerated in a clean sealed bottle. If it thins with repeated use or shows cloudiness or gas, it has begun to ferment and should be discarded.
Birch beer belongs to the same family of American root and bark sodas as root beer and sarsaparilla, all of which began as home-brewed small beers before the soda fountain turned them into syrups. The flavor comes from sweet or black birch, Betula lenta, whose inner bark and twigs are rich in methyl salicylate and give the sharp, cooling, wintergreen-like note that distinguishes birch beer from root beer's heavier sassafras profile. It is most closely associated with Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic, where regional bottlers still produce red, white and brown versions, and where tapping birches in early spring for sap and bark is often said to have been a common rural practice. The formula itself suggests that by the time books like this one were written, the fountain man no longer touched a tree: he would have bought a jug of concentrated extract from a supply house and done nothing but dilute it, which is all these two lines ask of him.