Root Beer

Root beer is one of the most distinctly American beverages — a soft drink with no direct equivalent in other countries, brewed from a combination of herbs, bark, and roots that bears no resemblance to beer (it is non-alcoholic) beyond its slight natural carbonation. The drink's flavors — sassafras, vanilla, wintergreen, anise — create a taste that Americans find nostalgic and comforting, while non-Americans often find it medicinal or strange. Root beer floats, served at old-fashioned soda fountains, are one of the great American dessert experiences.

drinkDetail.region United States

Native Americans used sassafras root tea medicinally for centuries. European settlers adopted the practice, creating a fermented root beer as a folk remedy and cooling drink. Commercial root beer was popularized by Charles Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist who began selling a root beer extract in 1876, then bottled it in 1893. A&W, now the most recognized root beer brand, was founded in 1919. Barq's, Mug, Stewart's, and IBC are other major commercial brands. The craft root beer movement, paralleling craft brewing, has produced hundreds of artisan small-batch root beers with premium ingredients.

Root beer occupies a special place in American nostalgic food culture — associated with drive-in restaurants, sock hops, soda fountains, and a pre-fast-food America. The A&W Drive-In, where carhops brought trays of frosted mugs to cars, was an American institution of the 1950s-60s. Root beer floats have been served at American soda fountains since the 1870s. The flavor's association with childhood, American summers, and old-fashioned drugstore culture gives root beer an almost sentimentally American character that no other beverage quite matches.