Digging for facts". bottlebooks.com. Archived from the original on 2018-11-01 . Retrieved 2008-05-21. Pharmacist Charles Elmer Hires was the first to successfully market a commercial brand of root beer. Hires developed his root tea made from sassafras in 1875, debuted a commercial version of root beer at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876, and began selling his extract. Hires was a teetotaler who wanted to call the beverage "root tea". However, his desire to market the product to Pennsylvania coal miners caused him to call his product "root beer", instead. [6] [7]

Beyond its aromatic qualities, the medicinal benefits of sassafras were well known to both Native Americans and Europeans, and druggists began marketing root beer for its medicinal qualities. [5] A Hires' root beer advertisement from 1894 Root Beer: An Exclusively American Soft Drink". Grub Americana. 17 August 2013 . Retrieved 2015-10-31.Fankhauser, David B. "MAKING ROOT BEER AT HOME". biology.clc.uc.edu/fankhauser/. Archived from the original on 2007-10-19. Ehler, James (2022). "Root beer: why does it foam so much?". FoodReference.com . Retrieved 21 April 2022.

Regular Barq's has 22.5 mg of caffeine per 12 ounce serving (similar to green tea), [10] while Diet Barq's has no caffeine. Barq's also contains sodium benzoate as a flavor protectant, which under the right conditions, is a precursor to the known carcinogen benzene. [11] It was still used as of 2008. Coming Soon: Barq's Root Beer redesign". BevReview.com. 2012-02-22. Archived from the original on 2013-12-04 . Retrieved 2014-01-25.Not all traditional or commercial root beers were sassafras-based. One of Hires's early competitors was Barq's, which began selling its sarsaparilla-based root beer in 1898 and was labeled simply as "Barq's". [10] a b Sokolov, Raymond (April 5, 1993). Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats. Touchstone. p.174. ISBN 978-0671797911. Root beer was originally made with sassafras root and bark which, due to its mucilaginous properties, formed a natural, long lasting foam, a characteristic feature of the beverage. Root beer was originally carbonated by fermentation. As demand and technology changed, carbonated water was used. Some manufacturers used small amounts of starch (e.g. from cassava) with natural surfactants to reproduce the familiar foaming character of sassafras-based root beer. Some brands of root beer have distinctive foaming behaviors, which has been used as part of their marketing identity. [14] Ingredients a b c Dietz, B; Bolton, Jl (April 2007). "Botanical dietary supplements gone bad". Chemical Research in Toxicology. 20 (4): 586–90. doi: 10.1021/tx7000527. ISSN 0893-228X. PMC 2504026. PMID 17362034.

Since safrole, a key component of sassafras, was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960 due to its carcinogenicity, most commercial root beers have been flavored using artificial sassafras flavoring, [1] [2] but a few (e.g. Hansen's) use a safrole-free sassafras extract. [3] In 1886, Hires began to bottle a beverage made from his famous extract. By 1893, root beer was distributed widely across the United States. Non-alcoholic versions of root beer became commercially successful, especially during Prohibition. [8] [9] Higgins, Nadia (August 1, 2013). Fun Food Inventions (Awesome Inventions You Use Every Day). 21st Century. p.30. ISBN 978-1467710916. Barq met a young boy on the Mississippi coast, Jesse Robinson, and employed him. Robinson was mentored by Barq and later moved to New Orleans. In 1934 Barq and Robinson signed a contractual agreement on Barq's product rights allowing Robinson to make his own concentrate, uncommon in beverage bottling licenses. The two men remained close their entire lives, working on flavors and production challenges. A distinctive difference between the Biloxi-based root beer and the Louisiana's was that the Louisiana bottle was printed in red (versus Biloxi's blue). This was to distinguish ownership of bottles as blue labeled ones were returned to Mississippi and vice versa. There were also regional taste differences between the various Barq's bottlers. While there may have been minor formula differences, water was most responsible. [ citation needed] Safrole, the aromatic oil found in sassafras roots and bark that gave traditional root beer its distinctive flavor, was banned in commercially mass-produced foods and drugs by the FDA in 1960. [1] Laboratory animals that were given oral doses of sassafras tea or sassafras oil that contained large doses of safrole developed permanent liver damage or various types of cancer. [1] While sassafras is no longer used in commercially produced root beer and is sometimes replaced with artificial flavors, natural extracts with the safrole distilled and removed are available. [11] [12] Traditional methodBoudreaux, Edmond (February 5, 2013). Legends and Lore of the Mississippi Golden Gulf Coast. The History Press. p.145. ASIN B00BBXFJOC.