Floating Through the Lazy Days of Summer
There is nothing more refreshing on a hot summer day than a cold frosty root beer float. If you’re a member of the Boomer generation, can you remember going to your favorite drive-in and ordering a root beer float? The waitress would bring it directly to your car and it would arrive in a frosty mug, suds spilling over, with a long plastic spoon so you could capture each and every drop of the root beer and ice cream as they dissolved into one. Utterly delicious!
Those memories got me thinking about root beer and I realized that I knew very little about this wonderful soft drink. Most historians believe that the invention of an actual root beer recipe happened by accident in 1870 through the efforts of an unknown pharmacist that was eager to create a “miracle drug”. He began toying with a combination of roots, berries and herbs and came up with a recipe for root beer. The drink was reported to be quite medicinal, tasting both bitter and sweet. It was offered to the public as a cure-all, but it was never marketed or well-received.
However, at about the same time, another pharmacist, Charles Hires discovered an herbal tea that he liked. He expanded the recipe to include herbs and roots and developed a dry mixture that he marketed to the public. It was so well received that he developed a liquid concentrate from more than 25 herbs, berries and roots. The public loved the new drink and Hires introduced commercial root beer to the public in 1876 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Again, the public responded favorably and by 1893 the Hires family was selling bottled versions of their root beer. Hires Root Beer is available even today through online specialty shops.
Modern day root beer is made from a mixture of flavorings, sweeteners and carbonation sources. It still contains a large number of herbs like sarsaparilla root, ginger root, juniper, birch bark and various oils. The sweetening agents can vary and include: cane sugar, molasses, corn sugar or fructose. The recipes vary from manufacturer to manufacturer and loyal followings have emerged for the smaller, artisanal varieties of root beer. One is Sprecher and my particular favorite is a root beer called Roundhouse Root Beer manufactured in Aurora, Illinois. It’s rich and creamy, but with a strong bite which holds up well when you use it in root beer floats.
Whichever root beer you fancy, this summer when you’re in the mood for something refreshing, create a cool and frosty Root Beer Float and kick back and relax!