Why Root Beer Is a Huge Deal in Utah

After I was rising up, my grandmother would decide my brother and me up from college on Fridays and take us straight to a diner the place she and my grandfather had gone on a few of their first dates. Our order was at all times the identical: a burger, cheese fries, and a kid-sized root beer in a frosted mug. As soon as, when my brother introduced a college good friend alongside, we watched his eyes widen into saucers as we positioned our orders. “My mother and father don’t let youngsters drink beer,” he whispered. 

He’s not the primary or the final to get confused. For a lot of, root beer is one thing of a thriller.

Beloved in sure areas of the US, significantly in elements of the South and, oddly, Utah (extra on that later), you may argue that root beer is an underdog American icon. It conjures photographs of drug retailer counters, jukeboxes, and good, clear enjoyable. It’s additionally syrupy candy, carbonated, and — a reduction to childhood mates all over the place — non-alcoholic. What’s to not love? 

What’s root beer? 

Root beer is a soda (or pop, or soda pop, relying in your area) invented in North America, doubtless within the 18th century. At first, it was served sizzling, however by the 1850s enterprising chilly beverage followers started combining root beer syrup with soda water for a refreshing twist.  

Initially, Individuals used root beer medicinally. Its distinctive taste got here from the American sassafras root, a perennial tree as soon as utilized by the Japanese Cherokee (and later European settlers) to deal with situations together with colds, fevers, and rheumatism. Even fashionable root beer as we all know it (carbonated, chilly, candy) was initially marketed as a medicinal beverage by drug shops. Hires Root Beer, for instance, was invented by a pharmacist who first bought it as Hires Root Tea. 

At present, no two root beer manufacturers are alike in taste or ingredient checklist. In 1976, after a examine on rats revealed that sassafras root extract was carcinogenic, the FDA banned its use. 

Consequently, root beer manufacturers needed to develop various recipes to keep up the identical (or at the least related) taste that drinkers had come to like. Whereas there’s no commonplace recipe for contemporary root beer, most manufacturers now use various roots and barks as an alternative of sassafras, resembling birch bark or dandelion, licorice, or sarsaparilla roots.

Relying on the elements used, root beer can style candy, spicy, and ever-so-slightly like an natural tincture. 

Additions like vanilla and molasses give root beer a creamy mouthfeel, not not like cream soda, whereas spices like cinnamon, cloves, and ginger imbue a delicate kick, just like Dr. Pepper. 

Root and bark extracts add the highest notes that set root beer other than different smooth drinks like vanilla-forward Coca-Cola or cream soda. Some detractors, significantly these throughout the Atlantic, the place root beer by no means made a lot headway, liken root beer to medicinal gadgets like mouthwash or cough syrup.

Does root beer have alcohol?

Regardless of its identify, virtually all root beer is, and has at all times been, alcohol-free. Nevertheless, in recent times, arduous root beer manufacturers with names like Not Your Father’s Root Beer have appeared available on the market. 

The “beer” in root beer comes as an alternative from its unique brewing course of, which was just like commonplace beer brewing. The primary root beer was carbonated by fermentation utilizing yeast, which resulted in a foam head just like what you’d get when ordering an IPA on faucet. At present’s canned root beer makes use of carbonated water as an alternative — no party-trick foam and much simpler to provide at scale. 

Does root beer have caffeine?

Root beer can be naturally caffeine-free, though some manufacturers, like Barq’s, add caffeine; every 12-ounce serving of Barq’s accommodates ​​22.5 mg, roughly the equal of a cup of inexperienced tea. 

The place is root beer hottest?

No pun meant, root beer has deep roots in particular corners of the US. In 2022, Eat This, Not That used Google Tendencies knowledge to establish the preferred soda manufacturers by state, and root beer topped the checklist in Kentucky, Maine, North Carolina (a betrayal provided that it’s Pepsi’s house state), and South Dakota. 

After which there’s Utah. The state is well-known for its soda consumption, primarily due to its excessive inhabitants of members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, identified informally as Mormons, who comply with spiritual doctrine that requires them to abstain from alcohol and sizzling drinks like espresso or tea.

Traditionally, LDS Church leaders interpreted that to imply no caffeine, full cease. On menus throughout the state, caffeine-free smooth drinks abound, and Utah is credited with beginning the TikTok-famous “soiled soda” pattern. However root beer has lengthy been integral to LDS tradition, celebrations, and lore. 

Lengthy earlier than the faith discovered its everlasting house in Utah, LDS founder Joseph Smith supposedly made root beer on his farm in Palmyra, New York, promoting it at a “cake and beer store” on the town to assist his household and followers. At present, LDS households serve do-it-yourself root beer, usually made with root beer syrup and dry ice, at Fourth of July barbecues and in punch bowls at Halloween gatherings. Additionally they usually embody root beer syrup in care packages for LDS missionaries who lengthy for a well-known taste removed from house.  

“We’ve lengthy speculated about why root beer and root beer floats are so in style amongst members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,” says Alexander Foster, a household consultant of Hires Huge H, a historic diner chain in Salt Lake Metropolis. “[Root beer became] a part of our tradition early on, so it’s a part of the group material. A lot of our social interactions give attention to gathering round candy treats and ice cream as an alternative of alcohol, tea, or espresso.” 

Hires Huge H will get its identify from Hires Root Beer, which the restaurant has bought in ice-cold mugs since proprietor (and LDS member) Don Hale opened the primary location in 1959. 

“Don loved a great glass of root beer and due to its reputation [in Utah], thought it might be a enjoyable addition to the menu and the restaurant,” says Foster.

He was proper. At the same time as root beer’s reputation has declined elsewhere within the U.S. in favor of different smooth drinks, Hires Huge H holds tight to its, nicely, roots. 

Pop in six days per week (they’re closed on Sundays), and also you’ll see frosted mugs at each different desk. The restaurant group even negotiated a particular cope with Coca-Cola to permit them to proceed serving root beer along with Coke merchandise. 

There’s additionally one thing a little bit, dare we are saying, debaucherous about root beer, which lends it heightened enchantment amongst Utahns. 

“I feel there’s a slight thrill for some LDS members once they order a drink that has ‘beer’ within the identify,” says Foster. “It’s the beverage equal of utilizing ‘darn’ whenever you’d wish to swear, however don’t need to break the Ten Commandments.” 

Root beer might not have unfold far overseas, however in small pockets of the U.S., it’s a darn tremendous smooth drink.