Of course Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, Seven Up, Dr. Pepper, Mountain Dew, Royal Crown Cola, Faygo fruit flavored soda and a gross ton of other soft drink or soda pop brands are as important to Boomers as coffee, beer, or whisky. We are the soft drink generation or “Pepsi generation” and we know that things do go better with Coke and nothing does it like Seven Up and we all would like to be a Pepper too! So when and where did this begin?
In 1787 Englishman Joseph Priestly discovered a way to infuse water with carbon dioxide, and carbonation was born. Priestly served the pleasant tasting water to friends. It also tended to sooth the stomach. Working along that line, a Swedish chemist named Jons Jacob Berzilius stared adding flavors such as lemon, cinnamon, ginger, and vanilla to his “soda water” to improve the taste. Johan Jacob Schweppes, a Swiss chemist, started bottling soda water in Geneva. By 1802 he moved to London. In 1820 he, too, started adding flavor to his soda. He started adding ginger root and came up with a concoction he called ginger beer — it became very popular. By 1840 there were more than 50 soda manufacturers in London. They all started coming up with various flavors of “root beer,” some using birch bark, some using sassafras. In the United States sarsaparilla became popular as a medicinal drink. It was believed to cure skin diseases, bad circulation, and VD. It was also a popular non-alcoholic drink in the American West. Coke, Pepsi, and the rest started appearing in the later part of the 19th century.
In 1961 my family took a summer vacation trip to Florida. It was in Miami that I had my first encounter with birch beer. We stopped at a new fast food drive in called Burger King. Burger King was just getting started at the time. They offered the standard hamburger and fries but their featured drink was something called birch beer, something I had never heard of. I tried the birch beer — it was very different than anything I had ever tasted. I really liked it. It would be the last time I would taste it for 54 years. It turns out that birch beer remains a very popular drink in the mid-Atlantic states such Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware, and in parts of the South. It’s nearly unknown here in the Midwest. When Burger King showed up in Indiana I hoped that they would bring birch beer with them. They didn’t, probably because there were so many other soda pop flavors and more pressing problems to face than the acquisition of birch beer, I put the drink in the back of my mind.
I recently rediscovered ginger beer. It’s not bad but it’s like ginger ale on steroids. It is available locally. While looking for something else, I came upon the Kutztown Soda Works Web site. Located in Kutztown Penn., they bottle orange cream soda, cream soda, ginger beer, sarsaparilla, and …..birch beer, I could even have a case delivered by mail. I ordered a case containing both regular, white, and diet birch beer, along with some sarsaparilla. When I got the case I kept it on the front porch swing. I immediately tried my first birch beer in over half a century. It was even better than I remembered. Crisp, flavorful, and refreshing. A childhood memory more than justified. Later I tried a sarsaparilla. The bottle was very volatile. It exploded into sea of foam upon opening it. The taste was worth it. Sarsaparilla is a wonderfully delicious concoction. It’s another drink I don’t know where to buy retail in Indianapolis. However, my family and I will treasure my supply of birch beer. It’s like drinking history.
