GE - Rootbeer questions

Mills, Scott Scott.Mills at compaq.com
Mon Jan 24 10:32:20 PST 2000


Alternately, instead of the sugar you can use an equal amount of unsulfured
blackstrap molasses.  Molasses is what was used in traditional Colonial
American root beer, spruce beer, ginger beer, etc.  Remember root beer is a
colonial American invention as Sassafras is an American plant.

Other traditional ingredients you might want to consider for a root beer
recipe include:

Honey (as your sugar source)

coriander 
black cherry juice
ginger root 
wintergreen leaves
mint leaves
shredded licorice root 
sweet gale
star anise
mace
juniper berries 
dandelion root
burdock root

I have tasted root beers made with coriander, cherry juice, ginger, mint,
and wintergreen and found them to be complementary flavors.  However, the
wintergreen, mint, and ginger can easily be overdone.

The only thing that is really a absolute to get what we recognize as a root
beer flavor is the sassafras.  If you don't want to use root beer extract,
and you are uncomfortable with using sassafras root bark, then you can buy
commercial sassafras teas that have had the safrol (the carcinogen) removed.

Also, you can bottle this stuff in 2-liter plastic soda bottles.  In fact,
you might prefer the plastic bottles.  It is easy to squeeze the sides of
the plastic bottle to tell when pressure has built up, if a little too much
pressure builds up you can let out a little, and if you have a gusher you
can quickly screw the cap back down and let it settle so you don't lose all
your root beer.
 
Regards,

Eadric
  
  _____  

Scott Mills	 
Scott.Mills at Compaq.Com 
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