A Matter of Taste 
the same simple techniques European 
farmers used to make beer from barley. 
But these tree-derived drinks had a neg- 
ligible alcohol content, and they were 
thought to have medicinal, or tonic, 
properties. This is why even today in 
New England carbonated drinks are 
called tonics. 
Modern manufacturers make their 
soft drinks fizz by forcing carbon diox- 
ide into them under pressure. And the 
soft drinks we buy are truly soft be- 
cause they are not fermented. Tradi- 
1 tional root beer and the other sylvan 
I beers were genuine beers, in the sense 
that their bubbles arose naturally as a 
byproduct of yeast fermentation. 
A typical colonial recipe for root 
beer began with the making of a syrup. 
People boiled molasses and water, say 
one and a half gallons of molasses to 
five gallons of water, and then let the 
syrup cool for three hours. Into the syr- 
up went a quarter-pound each of sarsa- 
parilla root, bruised sassafras bark, and 
birch bark, which added a wintergreen 
flavor. Finally, our forefathers stirred 
in a cup of yeast and enough water to 
top off the vat at sixteen gallons. 
The mixture was then allowed to fer- 
ment for twelve hours. Finally, when 
drawn off and strained, the root beer 
went into kegs or other sealed contain- 
ers and continued to build up its fizz 
through secondary fermentation. 
Usually the alcohol content of such 
old-time root beers remained below 2 
percent, too low to be intoxicating. 
Some intrepid root brewers prolonged 
the initial fermentation so that the alco- 
hol level rose as high as 10 percent, 
enough to make them feel silly. But un- 
der normal circumstances, root beer 
and the other forest beverages were low- 
in alcohol and were classified as small 
beers. During Prohibition, root beer 
substituted for illegal malt-and-hops 
beer and was sold out of kegs in bars. 
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