How Root Beer Is Made – America’s First Soda

You're at a diner. Chrome counter, red vinyl stools. The server slides a frosted mug toward you. Root beer. That dark foamy drink that tastes like medicine? Wintergreen? Something your great-grandparents drank? But here's something that might surprise you. Root beer was America's original craft soda. Made by pharmacists. Brewed from actual tree roots and bark. And it almost became an alcoholic drink. Except one company made a decision that changed everything. So how do they make root beer? Let's explore the process. Here's the thing. Root beer isn't beer. Despite the name, no hops, no barley, no brewing. It's called beer because it used to be fermented. Pioneers and Native Americans made it by boiling sassafras roots, adding sugar, letting wild yeasts ferment it. Low alcohol. Medicinal. Refreshing. Sassafras was the key ingredient. The root of the sassafras tree, native to North America. Indigenous people used it for centuries. Europeans called it a miracle cure and exported it to Europe by the ton in the 1600s. The roots have intense complex flavor. Sweet. Spicy. Slightly minty. When you boiled them, volatile oils released into water. That became your base. By the 1840s, pharmacists were experimenting. They'd make sassafras tea and add other roots and barks. Sarsaparilla. Wintergreen. Birchbark. Licorice. Vanilla. Each pharmacy had its own secret recipe. Root teas, or root beers. Then came 1876. Charles Hyres, a Philadelphia pharmacist, introduced root beer at the Centennial Exposition. He sold it as powder. You mixed it with water, sugar, and yeast at home. It fermented in your bottle for days. Slightly alcoholic. Naturally carbonated. Hyres marketed it as the temperance drink. The wholesome alternative to alcohol. Problem was, it still contained trace alcohol from fermentation. Now here's where it gets interesting. In 1919, prohibition passed. Root beer had a choice. Stay fermented with trace alcohol or go fully non-alcoholic. Manufacturers pivoted. They stopped selling fermentation kits. Instead, they made root beer extract. Concentrated flavor syrup. No fermentation. No alcohol. You mixed it with carbonated water. Instant root beer. This killed homebrewing, but it made root beer commercial. Standardized. Bottled. Distributed nationally. Root beer went from craft drink to mass market soda overnight. But there was a problem with sassafras. In 1960, the FDA discovered something. Saffrol, the main compound in sassafras oil, caused liver cancer in rats. High doses. Lab conditions. But enough to ban it. The FDA prohibited sassafras root bark in food and beverages. After 300 years, the signature ingredient was gone. So what's in root beer today? Most modern root beer uses artificial sassafras flavor. Chemists identified the key compounds in sassafras, minus the saffrol, and synthesized them. You get the taste without the banned compound. Some premium brands use saffrol-free sassafras extract. They process the root to remove saffrol, then use remaining flavor oils. More expensive. More labor-intensive. But real sassafras, technically. The other ingredients vary by brand. Most contain wintergreen oil. That minty medicinal note. Very strong. Anise or licorice. That black licorice taste. Love it or hate it. Vanilla. Rounds out flavor, adds creaminess. Sarsaparilla. Earthy, slightly bitter. Root beer's cousin. Molasses or brown sugar. Color and depth. Citric acid. Tang. Balances sweetness. And secret ingredients. Birch bark. Cinnamon. Clove. Nutmeg. Cherry bark. Dandelion root. Some recipes use 15 or 20 different roots and spices. Making root beer today is simple. Create the flavor extract. Concentrated syrup with all those oils and flavors blended. Mix it with sugar syrup, water, and carbonate. Carbonation is critical. Root beer is highly carbonated, more than most sodas. That aggressive fizz creates the thick foam head when you pour. That's why root beer floats work. The carbonation whips ice cream into frothy texture. But here's the kicker. Root beer is uniquely American. You can't find it outside the United States and Canada. Europeans think it tastes like medicine. Specifically, hospital antiseptic. To them, it's undrinkable. Why? Wintergreen oil and sassafras flavor are used in European medicinal products. Their brains associate that taste with being sick. Americans grew up drinking root beer, so we associate it with dessert. It's the same phenomenon as cilantro tasting like soap to some people. Cultural context shapes flavor perception. The other uniquely American thing? Root beer floats. Nobody else does this. Pour root beer over vanilla ice cream. The carbonation reacts with ice cream fat, creating foam. The ice cream melts into root beer. Sweet, creamy, fizzy chaos. The float was invented, depending on who you ask, in either 1893 or 1874. Either way, over a century of American tradition. Some regions call it a black cow. Others, brown cow. Same thing. And there's the barrel age trend. Some craft makers age root beer in whiskey or bourbon barrels. The wood adds vanilla, oak, caramel notes. Residual whiskey flavor. Root beer trying to taste like the beer it never became. So let's go back to that diner. That frosted mug. But now, you know, root beer started as fermented sassafras root tea made by Native Americans and pioneers. You know, pharmacists turned it into commercial product in the 1800s. You know, prohibition killed home fermentation and turned it into extract-based soda. You know, sassafras was banned in 1960 for containing safrole. So modern root beer uses artificial flavor or safrole-free extract. You know, it contains wintergreen, vanilla, anise, and a dozen other roots and barks. You know, Europeans think it tastes like medicine because wintergreen is used in antiseptics there. You know, root beer floats exist because carbonation reacts with ice cream fat. The next time you drink root beer, you'll taste the complexity. Wintergreen, vanilla, anise, molasses. You'll understand why it's so heavily carbonated. You'll know you're drinking a flavor that only exists because of indigenous ingredients, prohibition, and an FDA ban. That's the process. We reveal how things actually work, one story at a time. If there's something you'd like us to explore next, let us know. Until then, trust the process.