Interesting Ideas: Root Beer Taste Test Results

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History

Old-line companies, playing to the nostalgia factor, like to say their flavors haven't changed since the good old days. But nearly all root beers went through a major trauma in the 1960s, when the Food and Drug Administration banned any sassafras extract that contained the suspected carcinogen safrole, a colorless essential oil. Safrole had been the flavoring most closely associated with root beer, and bottlers scrambled to find substitutes, including an artificial flavor to replace the prohibited extract.

Wintergreen is now the dominant flavoring in most root beer, along with vanilla, which supplies creaminess. Formulas vary, however. Some root beers include oil of anise, adding a licorice taste. Cinnamon, lemon oil, orange oil and cloves also are used. An extract of the yucca plant supplies foaminess. Some boutique brewers, such as Virgil's, are again using sassafras extract, but in a safened-up version.

Barq's uses no foaming agent at all ("Foam is for shaving and birth control," Barq's executive Rick Hill told the Chicago Tribune in 1994, adding that Barq's is instead more heavily carbonated), while Dad's has built a marketing campaign around its foam.

"There's no definition of what a root beer should be. It's almost like making a fruit punch," according to Phil Sprovieri, vice president of Flavorchem, a flavor-extract company in Downers Grove, Ill. "You can go spicy or you can make it smooth. Additives such as ginger add a little mystery to the potpourri of ingredients," he told the Tribune.

Root beer's freewheeling formulations reflect its antecedents, which go back to 18th and 19th Century farm households that brewed their own versions from any available ingredients.

In his book "Soda Poppery," Stephen N. Tchudi traces the modern drink to 1870, when Charles Hires began experimenting with a combination of roots, herbs and berries, including juniper, pipsissewa, spikenard, wintergreen, sarsaparilla, hops, vanilla beans, ginger, licorice, dog grass and birch bark.

Hires started out selling a powdered mix, and then a liquid extract for home brewing. He began bottling in 1893 in the Philadelphia area, according to Tchudi. As were other soft drinks, his root beer was sold for its supposed medicinal qualities as well as its ability to refresh. Almost from the beginning it could be found at soda fountains.

In the years after Hires introduced his drink to the public at the 1876 Philadelphia world's fair, competition proliferated. In a 1992 book on root beer collectibles, author Tom Morrison said he had substantiated the existence of 831 brands through the years on the evidence of bottles, bottle caps, labels and advertising, though he estimated that as many as 2,000 brands may have existed at one time or another.

In the meantime, root-beer consumption has its ups and downs. A Beverage Industry magazine survey showed sales of the seven biggest brands growing to an estimated 219.2 million cases in 1993 from 141.7 million in 1986. But root beers still accounted for only 2.7 percent of the soda-pop market, a percentage unchanged from 1989. The estimated 53.5 million cases of No. 1 A&W downed in 1993 were dwarfed by the 1.6 billion cases consumed of Coca-Cola Classic, and root beer also falls behind Dr Pepper and lemon-lime drinks.
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Taste test results

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