Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wine: Root Beer

The root beer made famous by the A&W Restaurants, is a non-alcholic, caffeine free, sweet, carbonated soft drink made using the root bark of the sassafras tree . A similar drink that tastes like root beer is made of the smilax vine, known as sarsaparilla. The main modern ingredients include filtered water, sugar, and safrole-free sassafras extract with added flavoring such as vanilla, caramel, wintergreen, black cherry, and licorice. My paternal grandmother, Helen S. Wright, included a recipe for root beer in her book, Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines, published in 1909. The recipe includes a brief fermentation time so was probably slightly alcoholic. Photo Credit Wikipedia

Here is a recipe from 1909 in the words of my grandmother:

Take one and one-half gallons of molasses, add five gallons of water at 60 Fahr. Let this stand two hours; then pour into a barrel, and add one-quarter pound powdered or bruised sassafra bark, one-quarter pound powdered or bruised wintergreen bark, one-quarter pound bruised sarsaparilla root, one half pint yeast, water enough to fill the small barrel. Ferment for twelve hours and bottle.

To buy Old Time Recipes for Home Made Wines by Helen S. Wright from Amazon.com  Click Here.