Recipe Story

One of my favourite treats growing up was a "brown Cow". Region appears to dictate the name and contents of this cold, sweet drink. Known as a root beer float, a black cow, a brown cow, and a sassy cow, this all-American favorite is a snap to make. Rootbeer poured over a scoup of vanilla ice cream, served with a long spoon. You can add chcolate syrup and whipped cream as you wish. Charles Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist isd credited with discovering a recipe for a delicious herbal tea while on his honeymoon. The pharmacist began selling a dry version of the tea mixture and also began working on a liquid version of the same tea. His was a combination of over twenty-five herbs, berries and roots to flavor a carbonated soda water drink. It was first introduced to the public at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exhibition. The Hires family continued to manufacture root beer and in 1893 first sold and distributed bottled root beer. Charles Hires and his family certainly contributed greatly to the popularity of modern root beer, however, the origins of root beer can be traced further back in history. 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. 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. Birch Beer is another tasty root beer drink. "BOYLAN'S ORIGINAL BIRCH BEER" is the most locally loved soft drink of its time. Rich with history, Boylan's Birch Beer started in a apothecary in the early 1890's and developed into the most popular flavor of The Boylan Sodaworks. *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. I will do a complete root beer blog and link to this recipe.

Ingredients

Directions