The Surprising Origin of My Favorite Beverage –Root Beer

story by Doug Smith

Imagine describing the taste of root beer to someone who has never tried it before. What would you say? It’s probably not easy to come up with an answer. If you're like most people, you don't know exactly what’s in the glass. Roots? Beer? Who's to say?

A craft soda aficionado might say that a sip of root beer has the sweet taste of honey, notes of wintergreen, vanilla, and a creamy mouthfeel. This is all true, but what is root beer? The sweet, bubbly, non-alcoholic root beer we know today bears little resemblance to the root beers of yesteryear. Well, root beer is a beverage with surprisingly deep and distinctly American roots. Before the first root beer was brewed, root teas and medicines were all the rage. Many indigenous peoples of North America brewed medicinal teas out of roots, bark, berries, and flowers. Some of these medicinal drinks used sassafras, wintergreen, and sarsaparilla. These North and Central American plants were thought to boost immune function, reduce inflammation, combat allergies, and more.

In the 1870s, this all changed thanks to a Philadelphia pharmacist named Charles E. Hires. After tasting a particularly delicious root beer at an inn during his honeymoon, Hires begged the innkeeper’s wife for her recipe. Hires got it, and when he returned from his honeymoon he started experimenting with his recipe. First, he came up with a way to turn the ingredients into a shelf-stable powder. Root beer powder was easier to sell and distribute as the base for a tasty non-alcoholic drink. Hires was a Quaker, and he was deeply opposed to alcohol. So, he wasted no time in fervently marketing his new “powder root tea” to local miners, men known for their love of the sauce. This didn’t go over well until at the suggestion of his friend Russell Conwell (founder of Temple University), Hires began working on a liquid formulation for root beer – a beverage that would be more appealing to the masses. The result was a combination of more than 25 herbs, berries, and roots that Hires used to flavor carbonated soda water. At Conwell's urging, Hires introduced his version of root beer to the public at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Fair. Hires' Root Beer was a hit. In 1893, the Hires family first sold and distributed bottled root beer and a commercial hit was born.