PicoBlog

I recently stopped at the Southern Tier Welcome Center in southern New York State, just over the Pennsylvania border. It wasn’t my first visit. It’s on the way to my son’s college. I like to stop there because they have a shop that sells nothing but food products made in New York State. Often there are things you can only get in New York State. There are mustards and potato chips and marinades and pasta sauces, all made by small and family outfits. Some are newish craft items, while others are products that have been around for a century. And about a quarter of them involve maple syrup in some way.

I picked up a few things, including some vodka sauce made by the Lost Dog Cafe, a Binghamton restaurant favored by my kid. Then I headed to the refrigerated section for a refreshment for the road. There I found a line of sodas I’d never heard of called Johnnie Ryan. They are made in Niagara Falls, so close to Canada that the labels are in both English and French. There was root beer, ginger ale, cream soda, cola. But I didn’t get any of those. I got the birch beer. Because birch beer is weird and old-fashioned. And I’m weird and old-fashioned. We’re a good match.

I wrote about birch beer for the current issue of Imbibe magazine, where I’ve been a contributor for years. It was one of my rare Imbibe articles that wasn’t about liquor or liquor people. And I had a ton of fun writing about it, because anyone who’s in the birch beer business in this day and age is going to be a bit off, a little eccentric, and with an allegiance to the old ways and the old flavors.

I spoke to the folks at Boylan (one of the biggest producers of birch beer); Polar, which is also fairly big; Sioux City, a rare brand of birch beer that chases after the young crowd; and Avery and Hosmer Moutain, two small family companies in Connecticut. (Hosmer is for sale, in case anyone out there wants to get in the birch beer business.) A few birch beer makers didn’t bother to return my calls, including Foxon Park in East Haven, a very old company best known for being the in-house birch beer at Frank Pepe’s pizzerias. You sometimes encounter that sort of indifference as a reporter when you’re dealing with people who aren’t used to speaking to the press. They either don’t want to be bothered or don’t understand why anyone would want to interview them. After all, how many stories are written about birch beer?

I also called a couple of my favorite hot dog joints, because, for whatever reason, old hot dog places always carry birch beer. Rutt’s Hut in Clifton, NJ, has red birch beer on tap. It comes from Sea Breeze, a fountain soda company in Towaco NJ, that’s been in business since 1925. Hot Dog Johnny’s in Buttzville, NJ—which advertises its birch beer on huge roadside signs—would not tell me the brand of birch beer they carry. It’s a state secret. I can respect that.

Birch beer people have a lot of funny stories. Chris Crowley, a member of the family that runs Polar Beverages in Massachusetts, told me a tale about how his birch-beer know-how helped solve a case at the state crime lab. Someone had sent in a bottle of ginger ale, convinced it had been tampered with, possibly with Aqua Velva aftershave. Crowley knew what had happened. The soda producer has not throughly cleaned out their equipment after a run of birch beer, the strong oils of which tend to linger and cling to metal. Some of that birch beer flavor was carried over into the ginger ale. (Sound like a good start to a “Law & Order” episode.)

Birch beer is an intensely regional product, which is probably one of the reasons I like it so much. You can buy other old time soda flavors anywhere. Root beer, ginger ale, cream soda, and sarsaparilla are all available nationwide. But you won’t find birch beer outside of New England, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. This is probably because, historically, those were the places where you could find the birch trees whose bark provides the drink’s distinctive wintergreen flavor. I found out just how regional it was when doing research for the Imbibe article. It is nearly impossible to buy birch beer in New York City. I went to every supermarket and deli in a two-mile radius of my own and came away is a single bottle of Boylan’s Creamy Red Birch Beer. You have to drive north or west to get it.

But it gets even more regional that that. There are several varieties of birch beer—white, brown, red and blue—and you’ll only find them in certain states. White birch beer, for instance, is a Connecticut and Rhode Island thing exclusively.

Do the different colors taste different? I don’t think so. But devotees to specific types will tell you different, and they believe it. My wife Mary Kate, who is from New Jersey, tells me that red birch beer is the best birch beer. And I’m not dumb enough to argue the point. Besides, I’m glad there are various kinds of birch beer. It makes the soda even weirder and more regional. And weird and regional is good in my book.

After sampling so many birch beer while working on the Imbibe article, I thought I would emerge with some solid favorites. But, what I found out is birch beer is a situational thing. I don’t think about what birch beer I like on its own. It’s a food soda. When I’m at Rutt’s Hut, I want their red birch beer on draft. When I’m at Frank Pepe’s having pizza, I want Foxon Park white birch beer. And when I’m swinging by Hot Dog Johnny’s, I’m going to have whatever secret brand it is they serve. It’s all about where you are and where you’re eating. If birch beer is going to insist on being a regional drink, we might as well take it as regional as possible.

That said, the final irony I learned in researching hyper-regional, New England birch beer was this: most of the old companies get their flavoring extract from the same company, Virginia Dare—located in Brooklyn.

In Episode 6 of the current season of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” customers at the strip club where Maisel is the emcee order from the bar: Mai Tais, Singapore Slings, Gin Rickeys, White Russians, Sidecars, Pink Squirrels, Grasshoppers, Palomas and Sherry Flips. Improbable, but the drinks are all correct to the period, except maybe the Paloma… At Jack & Joie, the cocktail-minded gift shop in Fish Creek, Wisconsin, you can now order custom Bloody Mary glasses and accompanying beer chaser glasses. Because you can’t have a Bloody in Wisconsin without a snit of beer on the side!… This is the final week the cat cocktail menu will be available at Grand Army in Brooklyn… Martiny’s, the new Gramercy Park-area cocktail bar with Takuma Watanabe from Angel’s Share heading the beverage program, opened for business last week…After closing at the height of the pandemic, Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co., arguably Philadelphia’s most famous cocktail bar, reopened in a new location near Rittenhouse Square Friday on April 22. It’s on a back alley a half-block from Rittenhouse Square at 1718 Latimer St., tucked into the rear of the 1715 Rittenhouse Hotel. In a first, reservations will be accepted via Resy… This year’s Portland Cocktail Week will be held November 13-18… The James Beard Foundation Media Awards nominations will be announced in New York on April 27.

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