What am I celebrating on tattoo Tuesday?
May 20, 2014
Today is Root Beer day. On this day in 1876 Charles Hines introduced commercially bottled root beer to the public in celebration of the centennial of the USA in Philadelphia.
Here are some bottles from my root beer cellar being watched over by Cmdr. Sam Vimes.
Root beer, of course, had been around for a long time. It is one of those homemade concoctions like birch beer, ginger beer, spruce beer, and sarsaparilla, that has many different recipes. Some of the ingredients in root beer (from Wikipedia) include:
Main ingredients
- Sassafras albidum – Sassafras (roots) – safrole. The oil from these roots is believed to be carcinogenic so artificial versions are generally used instead. However, natural extracts with the safrole distilled and removed are available.
- Smilax regelii – Sarsaparilla.
- Smilax glyciphylla – Sweet Sarsaparilla.
- Piper auritum – Root Beer Plant or Hoja Santa.
- Glycyrrhiza glabra – Liquorice (root).
- Aralia nudicaulis – Wild Sarsaparilla or “Rabbit Root”.
- Gaultheria procumbens – Wintergreen (leaves and berries) – the oil can be toxic.
- Betula lenta – Sweet Birch (sap/syrup/resin).
- Betula nigra – Black Birch (sap/syrup/resin).
- Prunus serotina – Black Cherry.
- Picea rubens – Red Spruce.
- Picea mariana – Black Spruce.
- Picea sitchensis – Sitka Spruce.
- Arctium lappa – Burdock (root).
- Taraxacum officinale – Dandelion (root).
Foam
- Quillaja saponaria – Soapbark.
- Manihot esculenta – Cassava, Manioc or Yuca (root).
Spices
- Pimenta dioica – Allspice.
- Theobroma cacao – Chocolate.
- Trigonella foenum-graecum – Fenugreek.
- Myroxylon balsamum – Tolu balsam.
- Abies balsamea – Balsam Fir.
- Myristica fragrans – Nutmeg.
- Cinnamomum verum – Cinnamon (bark).
- Cinnamomum aromaticum – Cassia (bark).
- Syzygium aromaticum – Clove.
- Foeniculum vulgare – Fennel (seed).
- Zingiber officinale – Ginger (root).
- Illicium verum – Star Anise.
- Pimpinella anisum – Anise.
- Humulus lupulus – Hops.
- Mentha species – Mint.
Other ingredients
I bet you thought I forgot the tattoo. Nope – here it is:
Gunsmoke and Knitting 
Cool! Just had root beer float and got to wondering what are the ingresdints I guessed sassafras. Thanks.
Yummy!
Enlightenment. So that’s how it got its name. 🙂 Tasty stuff.
Cheers!