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Birch Beer To Charge in a Portable Fountain
American Birch Beer Extract, 3 ounces; American Soda Foam, 1½ ounce; Simple Syrup, ½ gallons; Water, 8½ gallons. Place in a steel fountain, and charge with carbonic acid gas to a pressure of 100 pounds. To be drawn from a dispensing apparatus in the manner of soda water, but without syrup. The beverage can be more readily dispensed by use of a beer pitcher made to draw from the bottom, by use of which the tumbler is partly filled with solid beverage, the remainder being drawn directly into the tumbler We offer such a pitcher, 3-quart size, $8.25; 4-quart size, $6.50.
This is a bulk pre-mix formula from the soda-fountain trade rather than a home recipe: nine gallons of finished birch beer, carbonated in a steel pressure vessel and drawn through a counter tap. The proportions translate down, but the hardware does not.
- The scaleTotal volume is about 9 gallons, roughly 96 twelve-ounce servings. Divided down, the working ratio is about 1 part simple syrup to 17 parts water, with extract at roughly 2 teaspoons per gallon of finished drink. Start at the low end of the extract and adjust; strengths of modern extracts vary widely.
- Extract and soda foam"American" here appears to be a proprietary product name rather than a style. Any birch beer extract works. Soda foam is a foaming agent, historically a saponin solution from quillaia or yucca; modern yucca-based foamers sold for root beer serve the same purpose and are purely cosmetic head-building.
- Simple syrupFountain simple syrup of the period was near-saturated, about 2 parts sugar to 1 part water by weight, not the 1:1 syrup most cooks make now. Using a thinner syrup will give a noticeably lean drink.
- The 100-pound chargeThis is the hinge and the reason the recipe cannot be followed literally at home. A hundred pounds per square inch is three to eight times normal carbonation pressure; it only made sense in a heavy riveted or seamless steel fountain designed and tested for it. Do not pressurise a corny keg, growler, bottle, or any vessel not rated and fitted with a working relief valve. Ordinary force-carbonation on modern equipment runs about 12 to 30 psi cold.
- Drawn without syrupUnlike the rest of the fountain repertoire, this is a finished beverage. The flavour is already in the tank, so it is pulled straight from the draught arm with no syrup pump stroke.
- The bottom-draw pitcherDrawing from the bottom fills the tumbler part way with liquid rather than foam, the remainder being drawn straight from the apparatus. Pouring a chilled batch and topping with soda water achieves a similar effect.
- TemperatureCarbon dioxide dissolves far better cold. Chill the syrup and water thoroughly before combining; a room-temperature mix will foam over and taste flat.
- The pricesThe $8.25 and $6.50 pitchers are catalogue listings from the publisher, not part of the formula. Note that the larger size is listed cheaper, possibly a typesetting error in the original.
Birch beer belongs to the same American family as root beer and sarsaparilla: a sweet, aromatic carbonated drink built on tree and root flavours, and generally traced to the small-batch fermented "beers" that rural households brewed from bark and twigs, most often from sweet or black birch, Betula lenta, whose sap and inner bark carry a wintergreen note. Commercially it stayed strongest in Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic, where birch beer is still a regional staple alongside root beer. By the time this book was published the fermenting had largely been dropped in favour of proprietary extracts sold by fountain supply houses, and the dispenser's job was reduced to measuring, diluting and charging. The catalogue prices tucked into the end of the instructions are a reminder of what these books actually were: trade manuals published by the firms that sold the extracts, the syrups, the steel fountains and the pitchers.