Homemade Root Beer, it’s EASY! Kid-friendly version made from the roots of sassafras plants, spices and molasses.
Every summer I drive east to spend some time with my goddaughter and her sisters on the Massachusetts coast just south of Cape Cod. In what is now an annual tradition, we collect sassafras roots for homemade root beer.
Homemade root beer is easy to make! The predominant aroma comes from the roots of sassafras, which is boiled with spices and molasses into a sweet syrup. Sassafras grows wild throughout the eastern United States and Canada and has traditionally been the main root for what we here call root beer.
Credit for the root beer goes to Hank Shaw, who taught me all about making Sassafras root beer on one of his trips back from the east coast.
Find Sassafras
If you’ve decided to join us on this Sassafras adventure, you need to find some Sassafras. (Apologies to the westerners among us, sassafras doesn’t grow out here, it only grows in the east.)
The sassafras plant grows into a small, bushy tree that likes the shade under the canopy of larger trees. We found our sassafras plants right on the edge of the backyard where it met a wooded area.
Sassafras plants are similar to young oak trees, but the main difference is in the leaves. you will find it two or three leaf forms grows on a sassafras plant – single oval leaves, glove-shaped leaves, and leaves with three lobes.
The plants tend to grow in clumps. Look for seedlings that are a few feet tall. They are the easiest to grow and their roots the easiest to cut.
Pull up the roots
Pull out a seedling at the base of the plant. (Note that if a young sassafras seedling is too difficult to grow it is probably too tall, look for a smaller one.)
After steeping, rinse the dirt off the plant and roots, wrap the roots in a paper towel, and store in a plastic bag in the refrigerator until ready to make your root beer.
safrole and sassafras
Before I go into the details of how the root beer is made, a disclaimer is in order. The main ingredient in sassafras is safrolewhich the FDA banned for commercial use in food in the early 1960’s because studies found that rats fed massive amounts of the material developed cancer or liver damage.
But here’s the catch. According to a government agency that extrapolates required human exposure based on rodent carcinogens (see the links below the recipe), you still have a much lower risk of cancer if you drink one Sassafras root beer a day than if you drink beer or wine to drink.
You’d have to drink a lot of this stuff over a long period of time for there to be a problem, and at those levels, the sugar in that much root beer would probably be a lot more toxic to you than the safrole. So remember my mother’s advice: “everything in moderation”. disclaimer over.
Fermented or non-fermented
Traditionally, root beer is fermented, hence the word “beer”. Our version is unfermented, but you could if you wanted to. Here’s a great blog post from Vaughnshire Farm on making fermented Sassafras root beer.
Our version is much simpler. Simply boil the roots with some spices and molasses, strain, add sugar and store as a syrup. Mix the syrup with soda water to make the root beer.
And you? If you enjoy making Sassafras Root Beer, please let us know in the comments.
Homemade Sassafras Root Beer
Hank likes to add a drop or two of mint extract to the sassafras syrup, which adds a nice touch.
ingredients
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Several root (including some green stems). sassafras Seedlings, about 30-40 inches worth of 1/4-inch thick roots (enough to fill one Cup if you chop them into 1/2 inch pieces)
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4 cups water
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2 cloves
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1/2 teaspoon aniseed (can substitute fennel)
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4 pimento Berry
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1 (1-Customs) floor Cinammon
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1/4 Cup molasses
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1 Cup sugar
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2 liter Mineral water
special equipment
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Cheesecloth or a fine sieve
method
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Prepare the roots:
Scrub the roots clean of dirt.
Cut the roots into 1/2 inch long pieces. (The roots can be tough, if you have pruning shears they are great at cutting the roots.) If you have a few green stems you can include them as well, but you should mainly have roots.
Cut as much as you need to fill a cup.
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Simmer Roots with Spices:
Place the roots in a small saucepan and cover with 4 cups of water. Add the cloves, aniseed, allspice berries, and cinnamon stick. Bring to the boil, reduce to a low heat and simmer for 25 minutes.
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Add molasses:
and simmer for another 5 minutes. Remove from stove.
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Strain and add sugar:
Strain through cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer lined with paper towel. rinse the pot. Return the liquid to the pot.
Add the sugar, heat until it is just simmering and the sugar has dissolved. Take it from the stove and let it cool off.
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To serve, add soda water to the syrup:
To assemble the root beer, fill a glass with ice cubes, add syrup and soda water in a 1:2 ratio, that is 1/3 cup syrup to 2/3 cups soda water. Add more soda water if you want it diluted, add more syrup if you want it stronger.
From the Ranking of Possible Cancer Hazards from Rodent Carcinogens: “Safrole is the main component of sassafras oil (up to 90%). It was formerly used as the main flavoring ingredient in root beer. It is also found in the oils of basil, nutmeg and mace (Nijssen et al., 1996). The HERP value for average consumption of naturally occurring safrole in spices is 0.03%. Safrole and safrol-containing sassafras oils have been banned as food additives in the United States and Canada (Canada Gazette, 1995; US Food and Drug Administration, 1960). Before the 1964 US ban, a person who consumed one glass of Sassafras root beer per day for life had a HERP level of 0.2% (Ames et al., 1987). Sassafras root is still available in health food stores and can therefore be used to make tea; the recipe is on the World Wide Web.”
This basically says that if you drink a glass of Sassafras root beer a day, it still has a lower risk of cancer than wine (0.6%) or beer (1, 8%) would have.
| nutritional information (per serving) | |
|---|---|
| 156 | calories |
| 0g | Fat |
| 29g | carbohydrates |
| 0g | protein |
