Title: Cherry, Sweet or Black Birch
Categories: Amerind Info
Yield: 1 Servings

		Uses:
		Beer
		Beverage
		Noodles
		Syrup
		Sugar
		Oil
		Wintergreen

A beer is made from birch bark. Fernald et al., (1958) quote an old English recipe for the beer:

"To every Gallon of Birch-water put a quart of Honey, well stirr'd together; then boil it almost an hour with a few Cloves, and a little Limon-peel, keeping it well scumm'd. When it is sufficiently boil'd, and become cold, add to it three or four Spoonfuls of good Ale to make it work...and when the Test begins to settle, bottle it up . . . it is gentle, and very harmless in operation within the body, and exceedingly sharpens the Appetite, being drunk ante pastum."

According to Grieve (1931), Kamschatka natives drink the sap without previous fermentation. In Spring, the inner bark can be cut up into noodle-sized strips and cooked as birch "noodles." Like maple sap, the sap can be used for honey, syrup, or sugar after boiling down. Wood used by cabinet makers. The oil distilled from the wood is insectifugal and can be used to preserve furs. Sweet Birch oil is used as a counter irritant for arthralgia and neuralgia, usually in balms, liniments, and ointments. It is used to impart a wintergreen flavor in such things as baked goods, candies, chewing gums, dairy desserts, gelatins, puddings, and root beer, rarely constituting as much as 0.1% of candy (Leung, 1980). Used in cosmetic shampoos (List and Horhammer, 1969-1979), and in the sugar industry for flavoring and in perfumery. Birch tar oil, distilled from the wood and bark of Betula pendula Roth is used for eczema, psoriasis, and other skin diseases.

Folk Medicine

According to Hartwell (1967-1971), the birch species are used in folk remedies for abdominal and mammary cancers and carcinomas and warts. Reported to be alterative, anodyne, antiseptic, counterirritant, deobstruent, depurative, diaphoretic, diuretic, parasiticide, pectoral, stomachic, and vulnerary, sweet birch is a folk remedy for burns, chafing, cold, cough, dandruff, dysentery, dysmenorrhea, gout, gravel, lumbago, rheumatism, scalds, sciatica, and sores (Duke and Wain,1981; List and Horhammer, 1969-1979; Erichsen-Brown, 1979). The bark has been used as an astringent, antiseptic, antipyretic, and antirheumatic. Cherokee chewed the leaves for dysentery and used the bark tea for colds, dysentery, milky urine, and stomach ailments. Delaware used the bark decoction as cathartic or emetic. Iroquois used it for colds, fever, soreness, and venereal diseases. Ojibwa used bark as diuretic. In the days of Milspaugh, much of the so-called oil in wintergreen was made instead from young birch, there being little variance between oil of wintergreen and oil of birch (Duke,1983c).

Source: James A. Duke. 1984. Handbook of Energy Crops. unpublished.

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