Root beer is the great American root soda: a sweet, creamy, deep-brown carbonated drink flavored with sassafras and wintergreen alongside a chorus of roots, barks, and spices. Traditionally non-alcoholic and tied to the soda fountain and the drive-in, it is at once medicinal-tasting and dessert-sweet, the base of the root beer float. Old-fashioned versions are brewed and naturally carbonated; most modern root beer is a syrup carbonated with pressurized gas.
Root-and-bark 'small beers' were brewed by Indigenous peoples and colonists alike as mild, often medicinal home beverages, and sassafras was one of the first North American exports to Europe, prized as a tonic. Root beer's leap to a commercial product is usually credited to Charles Elmer Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist who introduced a packaged root-tea blend and promoted it heavily after debuting it around the 1876 Centennial Exhibition; he is said to have called it 'beer' rather than 'tea' to appeal to working men. Its main flavor long came from sassafras root, but in 1960 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned safrole, the aromatic compound in sassafras oil, after it was found to be carcinogenic, so commercial root beer now uses safrole-free sassafras extract or artificial flavor.
Sweet and full-bodied, with a cool, almost minty wintergreen lift over a warm base of vanilla, caramel, and licorice-like sassafras. The carbonation is soft and creamy rather than sharp, and a good one foams thickly when poured. The finish is rooty and faintly bitter, like a sweetened herbal tonic, with vanilla lingering longest. Served ice-cold, it tastes best with a head of foam.
The signature taste is a blend: sassafras and wintergreen lead, supported by sarsaparilla, birch bark, licorice root, vanilla, and caramel for color and warmth. In the old brewed method, the flavored, sweetened liquid is fermented briefly with yeast, which consumes some sugar and releases carbon dioxide that dissolves under the capped pressure to carbonate the drink naturally — a balance that must be watched, since over-fermentation can build dangerous bottle pressure or turn it alcoholic. The creamy mouthfeel comes from vanilla and often from emulsified oils or a touch of an emulsifier such as yucca extract, which also stabilizes the thick foam. Modern production skips fermentation entirely, force-carbonating a finished syrup with pressurized carbon dioxide.
Variations
Sarsaparilla is a closely related but distinct root soda, often less sweet and more medicinal. Birch beer, popular in the Northeast, leads with birch bark instead of sassafras and may be red, brown, or clear. Brands diverge sharply in sweetness and creaminess, from sharp and dry to thick and vanilla-heavy. A hard root beer adds alcohol; a root beer float drops in vanilla ice cream; and a 'black cow' or 'brown cow' is a float made with chocolate ice cream or a splash of chocolate.
On the Palate
Where Root Beer sits in the American flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
6 steps · 40 min
- 120 min
Simmer the sassafras-free root and bark blend with water for about 20 minutes to extract their flavor, then strain.
- 25 min
Stir the sugar into the hot liquid until fully dissolved, then add vanilla and let cool to lukewarm.
- 32 min
Whisk a small amount of active yeast into the cooled, sweetened root tea.
- 43 min
Funnel into clean, strong bottles, leaving headspace, and cap tightly.
- 52880 min
Leave at warm room temperature for 2 to 4 days to carbonate, checking firmness daily.
Watch outLeave the capped bottles at warm room temperature only until they feel firm to a squeeze — that's enough natural carbonation; over-ferment and the pressure gets dangerous or it turns alcoholic. Check daily.
- 61440 min
Refrigerate to halt fermentation, then serve very cold over ice.
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