Soft drink of birch beer

Birch beer a beverage made with the sap of birch tree (black birch), first became popular in America in the 1880s, and 1890s during the temperance movement. It is unmalted brew made in North America form honey, birch twigs and birch sap.

The sap was also made into a medicinal tea. The American Indians knew that birch tea helped to relieve headaches. They gathered the leaves of the black birch, steeped them in hot water and drank the tea to relieve headaches and ease rheumatism.

The colonials were enthusiastic about birch beer which would not be classes as a beer at all in modern terminology, since it was not a malt drink.

The first birch beers were homemade, brewed without a standard recipe. Fresh birch sap is aid to have just a hint of sweetness with a slightly minty, wintergreen flavour. Black birch trees as with maples have a sap run in the spring. Early versions of birch beer contained yeast and were left to ferment, making them alcoholic. 

The sap has less sugar than maple sap, but it does have sufficient sugar to be boiled down and used for beer.
Original birch beer was first made in an apothecary in 1890. Birch beer is a regional specialty sold mostly in the Mid-Atlantic States and New England.

Today the ‘birch beer’ refers to an unfermented equivalent and it has become exclusively a soft drink. It is similar to root beer but flavored with oils of birch tree bark and sassafras or oil of wintergreen.
Soft drink of birch beer