shapu wrote:
Anyway, the best thing before sliced bread was obiously root beer. Still is, actually.
Root beer has its origins in what is referred to as "small beers." Small beers are a collection of local beverages (some alcoholic, some not) made during colonial times in America from a variety of herbs, barks, and roots that included: birch beer, sarsparilla beer, ginger beer and root beer. Ingredients in early root beers included allspice, birch bark, coriander, juniper, ginger, wintergreen, hops, burdock root, dandelion root, spikenard, pipsissewa, guaiacum chips, sarsaparilla, spicewood, wild cherry bark, yellow dock, prickly ash bark, sassafras root*, vanilla beans, hops, dog grass, molasses and licorice. Many of these ingredients are still used in root beer today along with carbonation. There is no one recipe
The Charles Hires' version of the root beer beverage was first introduced to the public at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exhibition.
Another famous brand of root beer is A & W Root Beer, now the number one selling root beer in the world. A & W Root Beer was founded by Roy Allen, who began marketing root beer in 1919.
*In 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned sassafras as a potential carcinogen, however, a method was found to remove the oil from sassafras. Only the oil is considered dangerous. Sassafras is one of the main ingredients in root beer
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