Hmmm ...In my experience, only liars think ambiguous communication is a good idea.
Root beer was originally called "root tea" and renamed "beer" in 1876. It has only ever been a non-alcoholic drink.Sorry, I do not understand your response?
Root beer was originally called "root tea" and renamed "beer" in 1876. It has only ever been a non-alcoholic drink.
One traditional recipe for making root beer involves cooking a syrup from molasses and water, letting the syrup cool for three hours, and combining it with the root ingredients (including sassafras root, sassafras bark, and wintergreen). Yeast was added, and the beverage was left to ferment for 12 hours, after which it was strained and rebottled for secondary fermentation. This recipe usually resulted in a beverage of 2% alcohol or less, although the recipe could be modified to produce a more alcoholic beverage.
Yeah, like I said "Re-writing history doesn't count". There is a difference, which I'm sure you'll understand, between making an alcoholic beer from roots and calling a non-alcoholic concoction "beer".That is incorrect. Anytime you use yeast and do not heat the finished product to cook of the alcohol it will result in an alcoholic beverage even if it is a low ABV.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_beer#Traditional_method
Yeah, like I said "Re-writing history doesn't count". There is a difference, which I'm sure you'll understand, between making an alcoholic beer from roots and calling a non-alcoholic concoction "beer".
From that very same wiki article:
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.
As I said, the drink now sold as "root beer" has never been anything other than a non-alcoholic product.
Root beer was sold in confectionery stores since the 1840s, and written recipes for root beer have been documented since the 1860s. It possibly was combined with soda as early as the 1850s, and root beer sold in stores was most often sold as a syrup rather than a ready-made beverage.[4] The tradition of brewing root beer is thought to have evolved out of other small beer traditions that produced fermented drinks with very low alcohol content that were thought to be healthier to drink than possibly tainted local sources of drinking water, and enhanced by the medicinal and nutritional qualities of the ingredients used. 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
Or calling a gliding squirrel a flying squirrel?Yeah, like I said "Re-writing history doesn't count". There is a difference, which I'm sure you'll understand, between making an alcoholic beer from roots and calling a non-alcoholic concoction "beer".
Actually that is exactly how the current product originated and was marketed. Earlier brewed products known as "root beer" are irrelevant. We are talking about the product developed by Charles Elmer Hires and currently sold as "root beer". That product was not developed as a beer, has never been alcoholic and was originally named "root tea". Hence my statement (which you agreed with, but then ignored) that there is a difference between a beer brewed from roots and a non-alcoholic product which was renamed as "beer" for purely commercial purposes.While Charles Elmer may have popularized a non alcoholic form that was not how the drink originated and was first marketed.
As with all these word games, that would only be a problem if somebody claimed the squirrel could fly.Or calling a gliding squirrel a flying squirrel?
Actually that is exactly how the current product originated and was marketed. Earlier brewed products known as "root beer" are irrelevant. We are talking about the product developed by Charles Elmer Hires and currently sold as "root beer". That product was not developed as a beer, has never been alcoholic and was originally named "root tea". Hence my statement (which you agreed with, but then ignored) that there is a difference between a beer brewed from roots and a non-alcoholic product which was renamed as "beer" for purely commercial purposes.
Perhaps the most famous name on the Main Line, at least for those in other parts of America, is Hires -- Charles E. Hires, the father of root beer.......I must have missed where our current soft drink "Root beer" was only based off of "Root tea" and not it's earlier forms. Show me that and I will agree with your statement.
Jokes, puns, espionage, subtle hints, clues.Can you think of any other situation where ambiguous communication is a good thing?
Perhaps the most famous name on the Main Line, at least for those in other parts of America, is Hires -- Charles E. Hires, the father of root beer.......
The story of where root beer came from has become apocryphal. Antiquarian League President Joseph DeLuca has spent years tracking down facts about Hires, because he is the town's local boy made good. According to him "Legend has it he was vacationing on a farm," says DeLuca, "but I think he was just visiting his parents' farm in Roadstown N.J.
Some say he discovered it on his honeymoon in New Jersey where the woman who ran their honeymoon hotel served root tea. Bridgeton (N.J.) Her recipe called for 26 roots, berries and herbs -- similar to a recipe used by Native Americans for years. Others say it came from his youth in New Jersey and was a secret recipe from the Indians. Whatever the truth, it is lost to history now
Hires almost named his new concoction "root tea." It was, after all, made of tea brewed from roots and herbs. [Emphasis mine] Crush International, Inc. of Cincinnati, Ohio, which now produces Hires Root Beer, goes with the honeymoon version. "It was there that he discovered an exciting new drink made of 16 wild roots and berries, including juniper, pipsissewa, spikenard, wintergreen, and sarsaparilla and hops," states the company.
Even that name change has a number of different stories. His obituary in 1937 says that the Rev. Dr. Russell Conwell, the founder of Temple University, asked Hires to help him concoct a beverage that might be sold among hard-drinking Pennsylvania miners in the interest of the temperance movement.
Others think it was named that because it was what was called at the time a "small beer." That was beer that was fresh and not yet fermented, so it contained no alcohol. What ever the reason, it was the right one and made Hires a millionaire. According to Mary Wood, the fact that it was named beer made him unpopular with his Philadelphia Quaker and led him to move membership to the Merion Meetinghouse. Fun as that sounds, even she is doubtful. The Quakers weren't against drinking, so why would they make a fuss?," she says.
Originally Hires packaged the mixture in boxes and sold it to housewives and soda fountains. They needed to mix in water, sugar and yeast.
Hires would become the largest manufacturer of the soft drink "root beer" in the world. But at first the drink was slow to catch on. Conwell did persuade Hires to present his product at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. Four years later, Hires marketed a liquid concentrate and in 1893 launched a bottled, ready-to-drink product. The editor of the Public Ledger, George W. Childs, liked the drink so much, he gave Hires free advertisement in his newspaper. "He sold 115,000 glasses of his product during the first year it was marketed," says DeLuca. "That quickly expanded to 700 million glasses." Hires stayed at the helm of his business, Hires, Wright & Brooks drugstore in Philadelphia until 1925 when his sons took over.
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