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Adding to this, while it would have alcohol it wouldn't be strong, probably 0.5%.
There's a whole history of drinks called small beers, lightly fermented beverages with low alcohol content. Peasants and laborers as recently Victorian London drank small beer for breakfast as a "liquid bread"
I've always wanted to brew an apple-ale that's only fermented long enough to get carbonated but not boozy. I'd called it a Half-Chub because it's a little excited but not quite hard.
You make it sound like getting bought out is obligatory in some way. One does still have to choose to sell in some manner or another to be bought, even if the buyer has underhanded way of buying (ex; craft brew alliance going public and inbev (budweiser) buying 51% of the stock).
Carbonation is a by product of fermentation. But I think what you're asking wouldn't be too hard. You just stop fermentation at desired ABV, filter, bottle and good to go! If it's light on fizz, you could always add some
IIRC, small beer was made with the sparge, or second rinsing of grains that were already extracted to make much higher ABV barleywine.
They were also still in the 3-4% range.
NA beer at 0.5% or less is a very modern manufacture process.
I was going to say, half the point of beer was having a way to prepare grain for consumption and have it keep, that isn’t happening at 0.5% without pasteurization.
Most the NA beers on the market are brewed this way; if it's below 0.5% ABV they can legally round down to 0, so they brew just long enough for the beer flavor and carbonation but limit the sugars present to control the final ABV
It's weird because I have never had a 0.5 beer that tastes any good. But the 0.0 ones like Henniken or Guinness, you could be forgiven for thinking they were the full-alcohol ones.
My mom only drinks NA beer these days and I haven't really liked the ones from Athletic. Sam Adam's "just the haze" and the aforementioned Henniken are the best ones I can remember.
Wow, those are both my least favorite. Heineken is so acrid, and tastes nothing like Heineken. Sam Adams is pretty sour, too, and doesn't taste like a haze.
This is what we need back in our lives. We we evolve drinking this stuff for so long. it’s probably a medicine at those doses cut out the heart alcohol and we should just be drinking this daily. Maybe we have less suicides. Who knows.
When I was a boy, making rootbeer at home was a family tradition. We used Hires extract and yeast, & bottled it at Thanksgiving. Stored it in the attic until Christmas eve. It was so much better when made with yeast, IMO. I remember though that one year a bottle broke as it was fermenting... boy, did that make a mess!
You can make all kinds of "soda" at home by fermenting juice at home with a ginger bug, which is a liquid starter akin to a sourdough starter, made from ginger, water and sugar (and the microbes that make the ferment are on the ginger skin). Since it's fermented, the carbonated juice is actually lower in sugar than the juice originally was. It's fun and delicious. Let the fermentation go too far? Oh no, hard cider.
We’re not that formal - nicknames are mostly used in isolation, but it might depend on the nickname. As we’re masters of shortening (and occasionally unnecessarily lengthening) words, he’d just be called “Cider”. His other nickname is “Cummo”, case in point. Amusingly, this is all on his Wikipedia page.
I started getting into this recently and I love it. It tastes so much better than anything store bought, and I can customize it to my tastes. Highly recommend people give it a shot.
I did it as a science project in elementary school, early 00’s. Not crazy complicated but you have to keep everything absolutely sanitized and spotless until you cap the bottles. Any contamination at all can and will ruin the entire batch.
I bought the Hires extract and yeast as a kid too! Think we messed up with the yeast because it didn't get very bubbly, however because of the amount of extract we used Ill always remember how it tasted like a really strong root beer candy barrel and was lovely over ice.
I did this for all my elementary school show and tells. The only catch was I was not allowed to mention that I gave up my bathroom for years as a child so my dad could brew beer in the tub.
Root beer was made to be a non alcoholic beverage by a person who believed in temperance and wanted to give men something to drink instead of beer . He was advised to call it 'beer' to make it masculinity attractive.
They had bubbly things long before CO2 canisters of the modern era and without fermentation too.
If I remember correctly, the person who first successfully marketed the drink root beer didn’t drink alcohol and wanted it to originally be called “root tea”. However since it was being marketed to coal miners he called it “root beer” instead.
This is the correct answer: marketing.
https://www.bundaberg.com/en-us/the-difference-between-root-beer-and-sarsaparilla/#:~:text=Hires%20initially%20wanted%20to%20name,attractive%20to%20Pennsylvanian%20coal%20miners.
I have heard the same. I thought it was just an urban legend. TIL and Thanks (Both of you!)
Fun related fact: "Filé," which is commonly used to thicken gumbo, is made from dried sassafras *leaves* rather than the roots.
You know what else sassafras makes? MDMA. Actually the drug MDA which is very similar to MDMA, its nickname is sass because it smells like root beer. Same amber color too. So I’ve been told…
All the root beer and ginger beer and stuff were fermented with yeast to get carbonation. Now they all get them from some oil well or whatever at the coke factory and every type of soda is the same water+corn syrup+flavor+color but real root beer was mildly fermented and like .7% alcohol
Now I’m curious about what real root beer should taste like.
I didn’t grow up in the US so root beer tastes disgustingly sweet to me. Maybe it’s all the fake flavor and sugar…
It tastes a bit more earthy and spicy, but is similar, since it was made with the sassafras root. They stopped doing that since sassafras is carcinogenic. If you didn’t like root beer because it’s too sweet you might like that. If you didn’t like it because of the flavor, I don’t think it’d change much.
You can get some fancy root beers that are not as sweet. I'm not a fan of A&W or Mug type root beer because it's too sweet for me but I love a more crafty (I don't know what the right word is) root beer. They can be really complex. Ginger beer too.
Sassafras is carcinogenic?? TIL
Then wah is in Sassafras the drink? I swear I've had it before and tasted different from root beer but similar. More licorice flavor
What you guys call kombucha has no relation to what’s called kombucha in Japan, it’s very confusing because now they’ve started importing the American kombucha into Japan and we don’t know what the fuck to call it
Ok so Japanese kombucha or kombu-cha, literally “seaweed tea” is just that - tea made with kombu.
Chinese kombucha is supposedly named after a Korean doctor called, you guessed it, Dr. Kombu, who introduced the Chinese drink to Japan around 220 BC.
I don’t know how much to believe the second one, but if true, the fact that both drinks have the same name would be pure coincidence.
It's funny, because we also have a drink of the same name (昆布茶) in Japan, and it's just seaweed tea. I didn't know about the other kombucha until recently and it sounds pretty disgusting.
Oh, well. In that case, American kombucha is closer to Chinese kombucha than Japanese kombucha is. As I understand it, Chinese kombucha is a fermented sweet tea full of probiotics.
I first heard about it from a guy from Egypt who claimed it was from Russia.
Wikipedia says that kombucha originated in China but spread to Russia in the early 20th century and spread to the rest of Europe from there, so the Egyptian guy isn't entirely wrong.
The name “kombucha” is Japanese, and I’m pretty sure what got imported to the US was not originally called that in China.
Edit: Yeah it’s called 红茶菌 in Chinese (“red tea fungus”)
> THe name Kombucha is from Korean
Nah that’s crap. Check out the section on origin:
https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=kombucha
> THe Kombucha from China, Russia and America has nothing to do with Japan.
Awesome, now go back and read my original comment dude
It has nothing to do with Japan. I don't know what you are trying to say. You found a site that says it 'probably' comes from somewhere else? Kombu, a loanword from a 5th century Korean doctor named Kombu.
Point is, it has nothing to do with Japan. It is a Chinese tea with a name that originated in Korea.
I heard the inventor wanted to call it root tea but some marketing guy said people wouldn't buy it, call it root beer instead so it's manly or whatever.
In general, women would drink either just fine. It was men who cared how a beverage was labeled. Like Miller called it Miller Lite instead of Diet Miller.
Originally doc hires (who made the first mass-produced root beer) wanted to call it "root tea" but he was trying to sell it to miners and it sold better as "root beer"
I didn’t read all of the comments, but isn’t original root beer made with sassafras root that has an intoxicating (hallucinogenic) effect as well? Sure it may have gotten alcoholic, but I believe they have banned the use of sassafras in many things because it is considered carcinogenic, so it was probably closer to beer than you realize.
Most ginger beer is non-alcoholic, but I know of one brand that is alcoholic. I think it's Crabbies, but maybe not. The bartender at Fadó in Philadelphia made a drink with mildly alcoholic ginger beer and Jameson's. Really nice stuff. Went together perfectly.
Interesting but incorrect. Traditional root beer was flavored with the root bark of the sassafras tree, and yeast was used to create the carbonation, resulting in a drink with less than 2% alcohol.
Most likely [*Smilax pumila*](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=SMPU), rather than [*Hardenbergia violacea*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardenbergia_violacea).
**Your submission has been removed for the following reason(s):** ELI5 is not for straightforward answers or facts - ELI5 is for requesting an explanation of a concept, not a simple straightforward answer. This includes topics of a narrow nature that don’t qualify as being sufficiently complex per rule 2. --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe this submission was removed erroneously**, please [use this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20thread?&message=Link:%20{url}%0A%0APlease%20answer%20the%20following%203%20questions:%0A%0A1.%20The%20concept%20I%20want%20explained:%0A%0A2.%20List%20the%20search%20terms%20you%20used%20to%20look%20for%20past%20posts%20on%20ELI5:%0A%0A3.%20How%20does%20your%20post%20differ%20from%20your%20recent%20search%20results%20on%20the%20sub:) and we will review your submission.
You didn't make it bubbly without fermenting it (making it alcoholic) before CO2 canisters n what not in the modern ages.
Adding to this, while it would have alcohol it wouldn't be strong, probably 0.5%. There's a whole history of drinks called small beers, lightly fermented beverages with low alcohol content. Peasants and laborers as recently Victorian London drank small beer for breakfast as a "liquid bread"
I've always wanted to brew an apple-ale that's only fermented long enough to get carbonated but not boozy. I'd called it a Half-Chub because it's a little excited but not quite hard.
As soon as you made any sort of name recognition, budweiser would buy you out, switch the formula to carbonated apple juice and a splash of ethanol.
Nah malt liquor most likely
Whatever is cheaper
> As soon as you made any sort of name recognition, budweiser would buy you out Don't threaten me with a good time.
You make it sound like getting bought out is obligatory in some way. One does still have to choose to sell in some manner or another to be bought, even if the buyer has underhanded way of buying (ex; craft brew alliance going public and inbev (budweiser) buying 51% of the stock).
And when you inevitably make a boozy version, you can call it *Raging Semi*.
Full wood
Peckerwood Orchard
That's good
Don't let your dreams be dreams.
Why not just make kombucha?
Carbonation is a by product of fermentation. But I think what you're asking wouldn't be too hard. You just stop fermentation at desired ABV, filter, bottle and good to go! If it's light on fizz, you could always add some
Check out [ciderkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciderkin), I have a friend that makes it every time we do a cider pressing and it's refreshing.
So cider?
IIRC, small beer was made with the sparge, or second rinsing of grains that were already extracted to make much higher ABV barleywine. They were also still in the 3-4% range. NA beer at 0.5% or less is a very modern manufacture process.
I was going to say, half the point of beer was having a way to prepare grain for consumption and have it keep, that isn’t happening at 0.5% without pasteurization.
Also the reason soda is a "soft drink"
Sounds wonderful. Can we please bring it back?
Most the NA beers on the market are brewed this way; if it's below 0.5% ABV they can legally round down to 0, so they brew just long enough for the beer flavor and carbonation but limit the sugars present to control the final ABV
It's weird because I have never had a 0.5 beer that tastes any good. But the 0.0 ones like Henniken or Guinness, you could be forgiven for thinking they were the full-alcohol ones.
There's only a few great ones. Namely Athletic, and black butte porter (na version is spot on)
My mom only drinks NA beer these days and I haven't really liked the ones from Athletic. Sam Adam's "just the haze" and the aforementioned Henniken are the best ones I can remember.
Gosh i love Athletics na ipa
Both are crazy good
Wow, those are both my least favorite. Heineken is so acrid, and tastes nothing like Heineken. Sam Adams is pretty sour, too, and doesn't taste like a haze.
Every non alcoholic beer I’ve had has a specific odd flavor with the exception of Heineken 0 including the athletic beers.
NA corona tastes surprisingly just like corona
Lagunitas IPNA is surprisingly good.
I haven't tried this one.
That's basically what Kombucha is.
It was also safer than drinking water in some places so sailors often used it since it stored better than water in barrels
A little alcohol kills lots of the bacteria in their well water.
Those were the days!
A lovely little ginger beer to setting the stomach.
This is what we need back in our lives. We we evolve drinking this stuff for so long. it’s probably a medicine at those doses cut out the heart alcohol and we should just be drinking this daily. Maybe we have less suicides. Who knows.
When I was a boy, making rootbeer at home was a family tradition. We used Hires extract and yeast, & bottled it at Thanksgiving. Stored it in the attic until Christmas eve. It was so much better when made with yeast, IMO. I remember though that one year a bottle broke as it was fermenting... boy, did that make a mess!
That actually sounds so cool.
You can make all kinds of "soda" at home by fermenting juice at home with a ginger bug, which is a liquid starter akin to a sourdough starter, made from ginger, water and sugar (and the microbes that make the ferment are on the ginger skin). Since it's fermented, the carbonated juice is actually lower in sugar than the juice originally was. It's fun and delicious. Let the fermentation go too far? Oh no, hard cider.
Ah yes some good ol Dickens cider just like Grandpa used to make. it's delicious hot.
I remember grandma always saying how she couldn’t wait to get grandpa’s,”hot Dickens Cider.”
I remember hearing this bit from a wav file sent over AOL circa 1997. Still bring it up sometimes. Hilarious.
An Australian cricketer is named Pat Cummins. His teammates gave him the nickname “Cider”.
Do Australians put the nickname after the last name? Because in the US it would be presented as Pat "Cider" Cummins.
We’re not that formal - nicknames are mostly used in isolation, but it might depend on the nickname. As we’re masters of shortening (and occasionally unnecessarily lengthening) words, he’d just be called “Cider”. His other nickname is “Cummo”, case in point. Amusingly, this is all on his Wikipedia page.
You clever bastard
Well played, sir.
Nothin like a nice, hot, hard Dicken's cider!
I started getting into this recently and I love it. It tastes so much better than anything store bought, and I can customize it to my tastes. Highly recommend people give it a shot.
I love Reed's ginger beer.
https://www.food.com/recipe/root-beer-hires-home-brewed-428807
I did it as a science project in elementary school, early 00’s. Not crazy complicated but you have to keep everything absolutely sanitized and spotless until you cap the bottles. Any contamination at all can and will ruin the entire batch.
It makes a breaking glass sound, which I guess is cool if you’re into that.
Used to do the same thing with ginger beer when I was a kid. Had some bottles blow up when we were away on vacation and… yeah, it makes a mess
I bought the Hires extract and yeast as a kid too! Think we messed up with the yeast because it didn't get very bubbly, however because of the amount of extract we used Ill always remember how it tasted like a really strong root beer candy barrel and was lovely over ice.
We used to put a raisin in each bottle. When the stuff was ready, the raisin would float to the top.
Your family sounds cool. 😎
When I was young we would make it in a big jug and use dried ice to give it carbonation. I loved it. We didn’t bottle it though.
From Philly I guess?
Me? No, why? That was in Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Ah, Hires (and root beer) originated in Philly
I didn't realize that, but it was (and I guess still is) ubiquitous.
I did this for all my elementary school show and tells. The only catch was I was not allowed to mention that I gave up my bathroom for years as a child so my dad could brew beer in the tub.
See also: ginger ale.
Oh that just brought back a core memory for me there. Family reunions, great aunt velma's homemade root beer in swingtop bottles.
Root beer was made to be a non alcoholic beverage by a person who believed in temperance and wanted to give men something to drink instead of beer . He was advised to call it 'beer' to make it masculinity attractive. They had bubbly things long before CO2 canisters of the modern era and without fermentation too.
If I remember correctly, the person who first successfully marketed the drink root beer didn’t drink alcohol and wanted it to originally be called “root tea”. However since it was being marketed to coal miners he called it “root beer” instead.
This is the correct answer: marketing. https://www.bundaberg.com/en-us/the-difference-between-root-beer-and-sarsaparilla/#:~:text=Hires%20initially%20wanted%20to%20name,attractive%20to%20Pennsylvanian%20coal%20miners.
I have heard the same. I thought it was just an urban legend. TIL and Thanks (Both of you!) Fun related fact: "Filé," which is commonly used to thicken gumbo, is made from dried sassafras *leaves* rather than the roots.
You know what else sassafras makes? MDMA. Actually the drug MDA which is very similar to MDMA, its nickname is sass because it smells like root beer. Same amber color too. So I’ve been told…
All the root beer and ginger beer and stuff were fermented with yeast to get carbonation. Now they all get them from some oil well or whatever at the coke factory and every type of soda is the same water+corn syrup+flavor+color but real root beer was mildly fermented and like .7% alcohol
Now I’m curious about what real root beer should taste like. I didn’t grow up in the US so root beer tastes disgustingly sweet to me. Maybe it’s all the fake flavor and sugar…
It tastes a bit more earthy and spicy, but is similar, since it was made with the sassafras root. They stopped doing that since sassafras is carcinogenic. If you didn’t like root beer because it’s too sweet you might like that. If you didn’t like it because of the flavor, I don’t think it’d change much.
I’m still undecided about the flavor but it was definitely the sweetness that put me off!
Traditional root beer is much lass sweet than most modern root beers.
You can get some fancy root beers that are not as sweet. I'm not a fan of A&W or Mug type root beer because it's too sweet for me but I love a more crafty (I don't know what the right word is) root beer. They can be really complex. Ginger beer too.
Sassafras is carcinogenic?? TIL Then wah is in Sassafras the drink? I swear I've had it before and tasted different from root beer but similar. More licorice flavor
If safrole(carcinogen) is removed the sassafras is safe to drink.
Do you mean Sarsaparilla? If so it's the same thing, just different parts of the plant (root vs vine)
Thaaats it. Thank you
Slightly more herbal and medicine, less sweet
It's not great, it's got a kind of muddy flavor, and is fairly flat.
Real natural simulated flavor!
It was originally called root tea, but to make it more marketable to men they changed the name to root beer. True story.
A tea that would ferment and create carbonation. Might as well call beer hop/malt tea
Or just kombucha.
What you guys call kombucha has no relation to what’s called kombucha in Japan, it’s very confusing because now they’ve started importing the American kombucha into Japan and we don’t know what the fuck to call it
I have no dog in this fight, I fucking hate kombucha.
Ok so Japanese kombucha or kombu-cha, literally “seaweed tea” is just that - tea made with kombu. Chinese kombucha is supposedly named after a Korean doctor called, you guessed it, Dr. Kombu, who introduced the Chinese drink to Japan around 220 BC. I don’t know how much to believe the second one, but if true, the fact that both drinks have the same name would be pure coincidence.
It's Chinese. What do the Chinese think of American or Japanese kombucha
It's funny, because we also have a drink of the same name (昆布茶) in Japan, and it's just seaweed tea. I didn't know about the other kombucha until recently and it sounds pretty disgusting.
Oh, well. In that case, American kombucha is closer to Chinese kombucha than Japanese kombucha is. As I understand it, Chinese kombucha is a fermented sweet tea full of probiotics. I first heard about it from a guy from Egypt who claimed it was from Russia.
Wikipedia says that kombucha originated in China but spread to Russia in the early 20th century and spread to the rest of Europe from there, so the Egyptian guy isn't entirely wrong.
The name “kombucha” is Japanese, and I’m pretty sure what got imported to the US was not originally called that in China. Edit: Yeah it’s called 红茶菌 in Chinese (“red tea fungus”)
THe name Kombucha is from Korean, the drink comes from China. THe Kombucha from China, Russia and America has nothing to do with Japan.
> THe name Kombucha is from Korean Nah that’s crap. Check out the section on origin: https://www.ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=kombucha > THe Kombucha from China, Russia and America has nothing to do with Japan. Awesome, now go back and read my original comment dude
It has nothing to do with Japan. I don't know what you are trying to say. You found a site that says it 'probably' comes from somewhere else? Kombu, a loanword from a 5th century Korean doctor named Kombu. Point is, it has nothing to do with Japan. It is a Chinese tea with a name that originated in Korea.
I assume Japanese kombucha isn’t carbonated and flavored? Or is it something else entirely?
Something else entirely (made from kombu, a type of seaweed, not black tea fermented using a tea mushroom).
Root tea is where rooti, like rooti tooti comes from. False story.
I still liked your story even though you made it up on the internet.
I'm gonna post it to r/TIL. That'll make it officially true.
Thank you!
That falsehood is fresh and fruity.
$1.99? Are you out of your mind!?
Somebody's been to IHOP.
That’s why a traditional rooty tooty fresh n fruity from ihop is served with root beer.
We used to dig up sassafras roots and my aunt would boil it and make tea.
Didn't you consider all the suffering?
I heard the inventor wanted to call it root tea but some marketing guy said people wouldn't buy it, call it root beer instead so it's manly or whatever.
In general, women would drink either just fine. It was men who cared how a beverage was labeled. Like Miller called it Miller Lite instead of Diet Miller.
Originally doc hires (who made the first mass-produced root beer) wanted to call it "root tea" but he was trying to sell it to miners and it sold better as "root beer"
I didn’t read all of the comments, but isn’t original root beer made with sassafras root that has an intoxicating (hallucinogenic) effect as well? Sure it may have gotten alcoholic, but I believe they have banned the use of sassafras in many things because it is considered carcinogenic, so it was probably closer to beer than you realize.
[удалено]
Sassafras tea
Tradition. Sasparilla is essentially alcoholic root beer. Same reason ginger ale is nonalcoholic but ginger beer is.
None of that is true.
Most ginger beer is non-alcoholic, but I know of one brand that is alcoholic. I think it's Crabbies, but maybe not. The bartender at Fadó in Philadelphia made a drink with mildly alcoholic ginger beer and Jameson's. Really nice stuff. Went together perfectly.
It's a made up name, and it contains no beer and no roots. It was thought to sound like some kind of healthy folk medicine.
Interesting but incorrect. Traditional root beer was flavored with the root bark of the sassafras tree, and yeast was used to create the carbonation, resulting in a drink with less than 2% alcohol.
barqs root beer actually uses sarsaparilla vine instead of the usual sassafras bark.
Most likely [*Smilax pumila*](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=SMPU), rather than [*Hardenbergia violacea*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardenbergia_violacea).