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The cartoon character ''[[Dennis the Menace (US)]]'' loves root beer and is fond of sneaking a bottle from the refrigerator.
The cartoon character ''[[Dennis the Menace (US)]]'' loves root beer and is fond of sneaking a bottle from the refrigerator.


In the 1998 film ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'', the narrator orders a [[sarsaparilla]] while talking to the Dude.
In the 1998 film ''[[The Big Lebowski]]'', the Stranger orders a [[sarsaparilla]] while talking to the Dude.


In Kidney Troubles, an episode aired during the tenth season of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Homer visits a saloon and orders a [[Whiskey]] and the bartender tells him that they only serve sarsaparilla. In addition, [[Grandpa Simpson]] claims that he isn't allowed sarsaparilla because it "angries up the blood." In another episode, Springfield decides to enforce a 200 year old prohibition law. When a detective asks if [[Ned Flanders]] was the beer baron smuggling in alcohol into Springfield Flanders states "If you mean root beer I am guil-gili-ity as char-didly-arged".
In Kidney Troubles, an episode aired during the tenth season of ''[[The Simpsons]]'', Homer visits a saloon and orders a [[Whiskey]] and the bartender tells him that they only serve sarsaparilla. In addition, [[Grandpa Simpson]] claims that he isn't allowed sarsaparilla because it "angries up the blood." In another episode, Springfield decides to enforce a 200 year old prohibition law. When a detective asks if [[Ned Flanders]] was the beer baron smuggling in alcohol into Springfield Flanders states "If you mean root beer I am guil-gili-ity as char-didly-arged".

Revision as of 18:57, 1 May 2007

File:Rootbeerfoam.JPG
A glass of root beer with foam

Root beer is a beverage that comes in two forms, alcoholic and as a soft drink. The alcoholic version is made from a combination of vanilla, cherry tree bark, licorice root, sarsaparilla root, artificial sassafras root bark flavoring (the pure form is mildly carcinogenic), nutmeg, anise, and molasses among other ingredients.

The soft drink version of root beer is non-alcoholic and is generally made using root beer extract or other flavored syrups along with carbonated water. The soft drink version of root beer constitutes about 3% of the American soft drink market.[1]

Many local brands of root beer exist, and homemade root beer is made from concentrate or (rarely) from actual roots. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic root beers have a thick and foamy head when poured.

Optional Ingredients

Root beer being poured into a glass

Ingredients may include allspice, birch bark, coriander, juniper, ginger, wintergreen, hops, burdock root, dandelion root, spikenard, pipsissewa, guaiacum, yellow dock, honey, clover, cinnamon, prickly ash bark, quillaia, and yucca.

Because of their pleasant flavor and medical properties some of the root beer ingredients have also occasionally been used in other products such as toothpaste, soap and medicine. This could explain why some people tasting root beer for the first time say that it reminds them of these products.

Due to the wide variety of ingredients possible the flavor of root beer is widely variable between brands, making it possible to determine which brand of root beer one is drinking solely by taste.

Root beer is very similar in taste to sarsaparilla, which may also be called root beer.

In Britain, there are several different root beers, which rose to prominence with the temperance movement in the 20th century. These include sarsaparilla, dandelion and burdock, and ginger beer. They were strongly flavored drinks that people could use as an alternative to alcoholic beverages, and there tended to be a strong local preference for one of these. Well into the 1960s, these outsold cola drinks.

Traditional use

A glass of bubbling root beer

Root beer was a traditional beverage and herbal medicine. The beverage was often alcoholic, usually around 2%. As a medicine it was used for treating cough and mouth sores. Commercially prepared root beer was developed by Charles Elmer Hires on May 16, 1866. He presented root tea powder at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial exhibition. In 1893 he began selling bottled carbonated root beer. There was an upsurgence in the popularity of root beer in the United States during the period of prohibition in the early 20th Century as local breweries resorted to brewing root beer since alcoholic beverages were outlawed.[2]

Root beer in culture and entertainment

Root beer is occasionally used by the media when a beer-like beverage is portrayed which must be non-alcoholic for family audiences. An example is Tapper, a popular arcade video game from Bally Midway in 1983. The player is a bartender who must pour and serve beer to customers in several different bars. When this caused some controversy, a nearly-identical variant of the game was released the following year called Root Beer Tapper, with all the beer now being root beer instead. Another instance was in an episode of Dragon Ball Z, a sign on a bar read 'Beer,' but for American TV audiences, Funimation added the word 'Root' between the edge of the sign and the 'B' in 'beer.'

In the comic strip, FoxTrot, the kids joke about drinking beer by saying they're enjoying root beer but keeping the word "root" quieter than "beer".

The Beach Boys wrote a song about drinking mugs of root beer at a "root beer stand," Chug-A-Lug, which was featured on their debut album, Surfin' Safari, in 1962.

British singer Jimmy Somerville formerly of Bronski Beat and The Communards released a short album called Root Beer in 2000, and its cover art featured a cartoon version of Somerville riding a root beer barrel like a rodeo bronco.

In the Monkey Island series of computer games, root beer is a weapon against the evil ghost pirate LeChuck. LeChuck is defeated with root beer in The Secret of Monkey Island.

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Starfleet Officers often order root beer at Quark's. Quark, the owner of the establishment, has stated that he loathes root beer because it is "so bubbly and cloying and happy." A Cardassian character, Garak, added: "Just like the federation."

In Charles Schulz's comic strip Peanuts, root beer is the beverage commonly drunk by beagle Snoopy.

The cartoon character Dennis the Menace (US) loves root beer and is fond of sneaking a bottle from the refrigerator.

In the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, the Stranger orders a sarsaparilla while talking to the Dude.

In Kidney Troubles, an episode aired during the tenth season of The Simpsons, Homer visits a saloon and orders a Whiskey and the bartender tells him that they only serve sarsaparilla. In addition, Grandpa Simpson claims that he isn't allowed sarsaparilla because it "angries up the blood." In another episode, Springfield decides to enforce a 200 year old prohibition law. When a detective asks if Ned Flanders was the beer baron smuggling in alcohol into Springfield Flanders states "If you mean root beer I am guil-gili-ity as char-didly-arged".

In the show Spongebob Squarepants, Plankton offers root beer for his relatives help.

Billy Joel's 1974 album Streetlife Serenade contains an instrumental song called "Root Beer Rag" in the style of ragtime music. Later, Root Beer Rag was also adopted as the name of the Billy Joel newsletter through 1989.

Root Beer is also the preferred beverage of the Biker Mice From Mars.

Richard Cunningham from the TV series Happy Days is seen ordering a root beer occasionally during the series.

In the popular kid's show Kids Next Door, root beer (and soft drinks in general) is treated as an equivalent to an alcoholic beverage, and is banned to kids under 13. The evil Mr. Fizz wages war on kids in a situation similar to Prohibition by trying to keep soda contraband under control by any mean possible - from storming into clandestine root beer saloons to bottling children - quite literally.

In the Sega video game Toejam & Earl, Root Beer is one of the items that can be collected - its only use being to make the protagonists constantly belch (thus subverting stealth).

In the video game A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia,made for the Nintendo Entertainment System,the root beer jellybean is one of 14 jellybeans which can be collected. Feeding the blob a root beer jellybean will cause it to turn into a rocket, which can then take the boy and the blob to and from Blobolonia.

The Honda Element SC can be ordered in a color called Root Beer Metallic (dark metallic brown/bronze).

Country singer Tom T. Hall's song "Sneaky Snake" (usually meaning a citizens' band radio in a police car) includes the lyric "I don't like ol' Sneaky Snake/He drank all my root beer!"

In the Children's TV show, Catscratch, the three main characters, Waffle, Mr.Blick, and Gordon, all like root beer. Gordon says that root beer is a "Brown slice of heaven."

In the episode Slutty Pumpkin of How I Met Your Mother, a girl dressed as a pumpkin makes an alcoholic drink combining Root beer (in soft drink form) and Kahlúa, and the resulting drink is akin to an alcoholic Tootsie Roll

In the 2000 Academy Award winner American Beauty, one of Lester's daydreams consists on Angela Hayes saying "is this root beer? I love root beer", kissing him shortly after.

Commercial soft drink brands

Commercial brands

Traditional root beer brands include:

The Samuel Adams brewery also produces an alcoholic variety in its Brewer/Patriot sampler pack. It is flavored with herbs, spices, honey, and molasses.

See also

References

  1. ^ Quarantiello, Laura E. The Root Beer Book. 96 pages. Limelight Books: 1997. ISBN 0-936653-78-7.
  2. ^ Kim Severson, Real Men Drink Root Beer, San Francisco Chronicle, April 28, 1999
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