Root beer - online puzzles

Root beer is a sweet North American soft drink traditionally made using the bark of the sassafras tree Sassafras albidum or the vine of Smilax ornata (sarsaparilla) as the primary flavor. Root beer may be alcoholic or non-alcoholic, most often non-alcoholic. It is naturally free of caffeine but can have caffeine added, and be carbonated or non-carbonated. It usually has a thick and foamy head when poured. Modern, commercially produced root beer is generally sweet, foamy, carbonated, non-alcoholic, and flavored using artificial sassafras flavoring. Sassafras root is still used to flavor traditional root beer, but since sassafras was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration due to the carcinogenicity of its constituent safrole, most commercial recipes do not contain sassafras. Some commercial root beers do use a safrole-free sassafras extract. Major producers include A&W Root Beer, Barq's, Dad 's Root Beer, Hires Root Beer, and Mug Root Beer.

History

Sassafras root beverages were made by indigenous peoples of the Americas for culinary and medicinal reasons before the arrival of Europeans in North America, and European culinary techniques have been applied to making traditional sassafras-based beverages similar to root beer since the 16th century. Root beer has been sold in confectionery stores since the 1840s, and written recipes for root beer have been documented since the 1860s.