Information AboutRoot Beer |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT ROOT BEER | |
| root beer | |
| soft beers and malt drinksroot beer | |
| soft beers and malt drinks | |
| soft drinks | |
| carbonated drinks | |
| soft beers and malt drinks | |
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Root beer is a uniquely North America n beverage, constituting about 3% of the American Soft Drink market. INGREDIENTS Other ingredients may include Allspice , Birch bark, Coriander , Juniper , Ginger , Wintergreen , Hops , Burdock root, Dandelion root, Spikenard , Pipsissewa , Guaiacum , Spicewood , Yellow Dock , Honey , Clover , Cinnamon , Prickly Ash bark, Yucca , Quillaja , and Dog Grass . Due to the wide variety of ingredients possible the flavor of root beer is widely variable between brands. This is especially true of local brands. Although root beer is a generic term used in America, in Britain there are several differentiated root beers, which rose to prominence with the Temperance Movement in the 20th century. These include Sarsaparilla , Dandelion And Burdock and Ginger Beer . They were strongly flavored drinks that people could use as an alternative to Alcoholic Beverages , and there tended to be a strong local preference for one of these. Well into the 1960 s, these outsold cola drinks. TRADITIONAL USE Root beer was a traditional beverage and herbal medicine. The beverage was often alcoholic, usually around 2%. As a medicine it was used for cough and mouth sores. Commercially prepared root beer was developed by Charles Elmer Hires on May 16 , 1866 . He presented root tea powder at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition . In 1893 he began selling bottled carbonated root beer. Home-made root beer is made using flavoring (either a concentrate, or actual roots and spices) to which is added sugar, water, and yeast. It is allowed to ferment under pressure to retain the carbonation and limit the alcohol produced by the yeast to low levels. SASSAFRAS CONTROVERSY The FDA banned Sassafras root in the U.S. in 1960 as it contains Safrole , a potential Carcinogen . The young shoots, bark, and leaves do not contain this toxin, so commercial extracts are often made from these. Also, Artificial Flavor ing agents have been developed which are used in some commercial root beers. Other varieties use sassafras root extract from which the safrole has been removed. The sassafras tree grows wild in most of the Eastern United States, and a person could harvest the wild plants; however, removing safrole from sassafras root extract, and verifying its safety for use, is a task that is beyond the ability and equipment of most homebrewers. ROOT BEER AS A FLAVOR Root beer is also used as a flavoring for Candy , Cough Drop s, Popcorn , Root Beer Float s, Cake s, and Bread s. ROOT BEER IN CULTURE AND ENTERTAINMENT Root beer is occasionally used by the media when a beer-like beverage is portrayed which must be non-alcoholic for family audiences. An example is '' Tapper '', a popular arcade video game from Bally Midway in 1983. The player is a bartender who must pour and serve beer to customers in several different bars. When this caused some controversy, a nearly-identical variant of the game was released the following year called ''Root Beer Tapper'', with all the beer now being root beer instead. British singer Jimmy Somerville released a short album called ''Root Beer'' in 2000 , and its cover art featured a cartoon version of Somerville riding a root beer barrel like a rodeo bronco. In the '' Monkey Island '' series of computer games, root beer is a weapon against ghosts. In Charles Schulz 's Comic Strip '' Peanuts '', root beer is the beverage commonly drunk by Beagle Snoopy . In the 1998 film '' The Big Lebowski '', the narrator orders a Sarsaparilla whilst talking to the Dude. In the science fiction series , the Ferengi bartender Quark sells root beer to his customers. At one point prior to a Klingon assault on the station, he offers a glass of root beer to the resident Cardassian tailor, Garak . In their ensuing conversation, they made the nature of root beer analoguous to the Federation (by extension, the Humans). The two of them despised the "vile" beverage, considering it a metaphor for the "insidious" pervasiveness of the Federation. Quark also remarked to Garak that root beer was "so bubbly, and cloying, and happy," to which Garak answered, "just like the Federation." He also noted that if "you drink enough of it, you begin to like it" -- just like the Federation. COMMERCIAL BRANDS Root beer brands include:
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