Charles Hires was a Philadelphia pharmacist who according to his biography
discovered 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. The result of was a combination
of over twenty-five herbs, berries and roots that Charles Hires used to flavor
a carbonated soda water drink. The Charles Hires' version of the root beer
beverage was first introduced to the public at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial
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.
*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.
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