Morning journal and courier., 1885-08-17
POPULAR MIXED DRINKS.

The Sarsaparilia is Not Sarsaparilla,
 Nor the Raspberry Raspberry.
 From the New York Sum-
 ''It may be freak of fashion or a result of
 this T. A. B. movement, but family temper ance drinks are getting very popular"
 The speaker was manufacturer of the
 articles named, and the place wilderness of
 bottles and machinery. ''Ten years ago
 did large business, but my. customers were
 exclusively saloons. Now my trade is five
 times larger, but nine-tenths of it are grocer
 ies and private families. What is uaed
 Root beer, sarsaparilla, ginger ale, raspberry,
 pop, mead, and plain beer. This is the order
 of their popularity. They are all made on
 the same basis-favoring, sugar, carbonic acid, gas and water. Root beer favoring is
 the extract of several roots, and is made by
 chemists and also by the Shakers: Sassafras is it's chief element. Sarsaparilla, as we make it, contains sarsaparilla. The best is favored with the extracts of sassafras, birch, and wintergreen. Ginger ale is not ale at all, but very dilute extract of ginger. Raspberry is not made from the fruit, but from some strong favored aromatic ethers. These are far cheaper and more convenient than the juice of the berry, Pop is soda water with few drops of vanilla in it. To give it extra gas we usually put in little bi-carbonate of soda Mead is root beer, to which we give heavy bead. Each manu- facturer has his own way of doing this Some use a little glycerine, some glucose. others gum, and others preparations of their own.
 "There is great deal of competition in ! our business. It affects us in two ways. ! We have to cut down our prices on the one side, and increase the size of our bottles on | the other. The latter have grown from pints II hold &hov, io1 quart That last lot of bottles being filled l there hold five goblets each. Then the price I has been forced down until we retail bottle for ten cents, and give back two cents when | the bottle is returned. As bottles cost us 8 l little more than cent each, we'd rather not ! have them returned. We supply families which are regular customers at 70 cents d | dozen and to groceries we sell at much lower ] figures This makes pretty cheap drinking, | just about cent glass. 1 I've have our troubles, however. Occa- | sionally our chemical extracts undergo some ! funny change and taste horrible. If we find | out in time, we throw them away. If we don't it spells lot of cases and loses us | customers. Sometimes, too, grocers will let \ the bottle stand long time in the sunlight. | Raspberry and pop are affected by sun l light, and their flavor changes to that of tur- pentine. These two drinks should be kept l in the dark. Then we have on hand quiet | fight with the bottled beer and ale men. | Their trade is what we cut into chiefly. They 1 try to hurt us by dropping kerosene on our 1 eorks or in our return bottles, and the slight l est film leaves @ perceptible smell and taste 1 that lasts for days and even weeks. We l get around the returned bottles by plunging 1 them first into hot lye and then washing them. Kerosene on corks, though, we can't get around except by keeping sharp eye on 1 the bottles until they are delivered.
 l 'sDo temperance folks use our goods mucha Strange to say, they don't. I guess they make their own drinks. Our customers are seldom T. A. B. know this from the fact that they are always returning ale and beer bottles in our cases. That's about all there
 is to our biz, except this: When you drink our stuff, take raspberry last of all and mead ! take next to last. ."