The history of the effervescent beverage can be traced to Native Americans in Florida who introduced it to Spanish explorers, Quarantiello told All About Beer magazine. She says the concoction had been used for years as a medicinal tea. But Charles Hires, a Philadelphia pharmacist, is credited with creating the modern bubbling beverage in the mid-1800s. He experimented at his drugstore by fermenting a blend of sugar and yeast with various roots, herbs and barks such as sarsaparilla, sassafras, wild cherry, wintergreen and ginger. The drink that he created and promoted in 1876 originally had a small amount of alcohol.
Root beer is now nonalcoholic.
No longer used in the brewing of the drink is sassafras root bark. The oil in the root and bark, known as safrole, was banned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1960 when it was labeled a carcinogen for causing liver cancer. Other ingredients for the frothy drink can include honey and licorice extracts and flavoring agents such as wintergreen and vanilla.