Root beer ingredients

The key component in root beer is the bark of the root of the sassafras tree, which is easily dug and rubbed off.

Typically, the rest of the ingredients include other tree products – such as cherry or birch bark – along with spices, citrus peel, and one or more ingredients from the anise/licorice group.

Low carbohydrate root beer normally use artificial sweeteners instead of sugar.

Almost every root beer recipe prior to the 1960s, used sassafras. Because of health issues with safrole, the FDA no-longer considers sassafras a safe flavoring ingredient.

Today wintergreen is the primary flavor in root beer. Other ingredients that can be used for flavoring are the bark or root of the following: anise, boxberry, cinnamon, clove, deerberry, spiceberry, teaberry and vanilla. 

The ingredients are simmered or stepped like tea, or extracted by some other method, depending on preference or family tradition.

The final ingredients of Hires root beer include: sarsaparilla, wintergreen, spikenard, birch bark, Italian juniper berries and dog grass. This root beer was introduced by Charles Elmer Hires in 1876.
Root beer ingredients

The invention of Barq’s soft drink

The Barq’s bottling company was established in 1890 in New Orleans, Louisiana by Edward Charles Edmond Barq and his younger brother, Gaston. By 1902 the name of the company had been changed to Barq’s Bottling Works.

It was first distributed along Mississippi’s Golden Gulf Coast. Often referred to as Barq’s Root Beer, its unique flavor makes it stand apart from any other root beer.

The inventor of Barq’s, Edward Barq, was listed on his birth certificate as Edward Charles Edmond Barq. 

It was Edwards’s invention of a root beer at his home near Biloxi with its own distinct flavor that brought him success.

This carbonated New Orleans institution goes well with the hot weather and full-flavored food.

Sometime between 1898 and 1900, his new drink, simply known as “Barq’s” was bottled and became a local favorite.

Sassafras roots and bark, dandelion, wild cherry, burdock, spruce, winter green, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and anise are flavorings found in root beers. Barq’s also contained caffeine.

The drinks popularity was unstoppable. By 1937, 62 bottling plants had been established in 22 states. The numbers peaked in 1950 at about 200, but by that time the "root beer" had been forced to undergo changes.
The invention of Barq’s soft drink

Early History of Root Beer

Early History of Root Beer
Roy Allen, who refurbished old hotels, met a pharmacists who had perfected a recipe for making root beer.

Allen bought the recipe and on June 20, 1919, opened a root beer stand in Lodi, California, offering frosty mugs of root beer for a nickel.

Shortly thereafter, he opened more stands in Stockton and Sacramento, one of which may have been a drive in.

In 1920, Frank Wright, an employee at the Stockton stand, became Allen’s partner they combine their initial and called the company A & W Root Beer.

Additional A & W stands were opened throughout California, Utah an Texas.

Allen eventually bought out Wright trademark the A & W became one of the first fast food franchise chains in the country.

Franchisees paid a small licensing fee, displayed the A & W logo, and bought root beer syrup from Allen.

Other than these connections, little commonality existed among franchisees - no common architecture, no common menu, and no common procedures or national advertising.

Some A & W Root Beer franchisees began selling food, including hamburgers and hot dogs, along with root beer. Some early A & W Root Beer stands were drive ins, featuring tray-boys ad tray –girls, later renamed carhops, who bought orders to customers in their car outside.

The depression affected franchises differently. Some went out of business but others opened more new stands. In 1933, A & W had 170 outlets; by 1942, it had stands nationwide.

The war years between 1941 and 1945, it had 260 stands nationwide. The war between 1941 and 1945, on the other hand, were very difficult time for A & W.

There were labor shortages and sugar shortages, and by the tine war ended many franchises had closed. After the war, however A & W rapidly expanded.

During the 1950s, Roy Allen sold the business to a Nebraskan, Gene Hurtz, who formed the A & W Root Beer Company,

Within ten years, the number of A & W outlets had increases to more than 2,000.

In 1956, an A & W Root Beer outlet opened in Canada followed by Guam and the Philippines.
Early History of Root Beer