Root Beer: Bark AND Bite

This sweet beverage doesn’t necessarily contain either roots or beer, but it certainly can. Anney and Lauren dip into the history and culture of root beer.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeart Radio. I'm
Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Bogelbaum, and today we're talking
about root beer, another thing I am very unfamiliar with.
We are on a roll. We apparently are okay. Well,
so so you have you have Annie as specific story
about why you're unfamiliar with root beer. And by unfamiliar,

(00:29):
you mean right before we started recording, you were like, wait,
is this dr pepper? Yes, so I clearly don't know
what it is, and I'm almost certain I have never
had it. Gosh yeah. So I used to think growing
up that it was actually beer. Oh yeah, And so

(00:53):
I did not drink it, which is funny to me
now because one of my best friends loved root beer
and root beer floats, and every time she told me
about it, I was like frubble maker, scandalized. I love this.
I was, in fact, and I know I've told my
fresco story where I drink of a bunch of fresca

(01:13):
thinking it was beer. But I guess if root beer
had been there, maybe I would have gone that way.
My my life could have gone very differently. We don't know, um,
But then I think it was two thousand and five,
I was in high school. Somebody dared me to give
up soda an idea out of spite. And then by
the time I realized there was no alcohol usually in

(01:33):
root beer, I'd given up sodas. Yeah, yeah, I was
already over. Y uh goodness, that is this is such
a strange like, like this universe of no root beer
that you live in is such a strange alternate universe
to me or to mine, because like I grew up
drinking root beer like regularly, Like we made it in

(01:56):
class in the first grade. Oh, that sounds like a
cool project. It was a very cool project. I did
not like the resulting root beer. I remember thinking that
it was too earthy and bitter, which means that I
would probably love it today. Um. But yeah, like on
when my dad and I would take road trips, UM

(02:19):
would make a special stop and an aw drive in
and I would get a root beer float. Um. My
dad was so excited when IBC became widely distributed, which
is a brand that sells root beer in cream, soda
and stuff. I yeah, like, oh, yeah, I do love this.
We have very differing experiences on this particular. Yeah, I do,

(02:45):
and I do think, um, this might be like a
northern versus Southern thing, because yeah, like like that that
that anw pit stop would be in like Ohio or Pennsylvania.
So right, and it is interesting and something we're gonna
touch on in this episode, that whole beer part of
this name and how that's been used and viewed over history,

(03:11):
because I definitely thought it was a beer. I didn't
I like, on the contrary, I didn't associate the word
beer with the alcoholic beverage, Like like I knew what
root beer was long before I knew what beer was,
and so like it was like years and years later

(03:31):
that I was like, oh man, these two different beverages
share a word in common. I wonder why that is.
And you never thought, oh, it's root beer beer. It
was just, oh, they're very separate. They're very separate things. Yeah, okay, okay,
al right. Well you can see our soda episode um
for more detail, especially on like soda fountains and stuff,

(03:52):
which does play into this story. But in the meantime,
let us get to our question root beer. What is it? Well,
root beer is a type of drink that, while originally
made of roots and beer, today may not contain either

(04:14):
necessarily very clear clear as root beer. Um. It is
most often a carbonated uh no or low alcohol soft
drink with a with complex sweet and bitter and earthy flavors,
with both like warming and cooling herbs and spices, usually
a hint of creaminess in there. There's no like single recipe,

(04:37):
but common ingredients may include a sassafras root, bark, sasaprilla, vanilla,
spearmint and or winter green, a nisse and or licorice, root,
molasses and or honey, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, allspice, juniper, coriander,
birch bark, cherry tree, bark, hops, burdock root, dandelion root.

(05:00):
It can contain a lot of different things. I have
no idea what this good taste like, but it helps
me none other than it sounds like spicy kind of yeah, yeah,
the the I guess the base notes of it are
that it's um, it's sweet and a little bit like
there's like a little bit of like a minty, cooling

(05:21):
flavor and a little bit of like a spicy flavor,
and then kind of like a like a little bit
of like bitterness to round it out. Mm hmm. Would
it be interesting, you know, we should bring back We
did like one taste test on here one time and
it was licorice. What if this is something I try

(05:44):
and it's a sixth thing. I don't like to change
my whole world expanding your list to six. I know,
see grape fruit was on there, but great fruit has
been removed, so there's a spot, there's a vacuum there.

(06:05):
I'm glad that you decided that you like grapefruit. Grapefruit
is delightful. Oh I love grapefruit now. But as a kid,
oh no, oh goodness. Um okay, so I guess. Traditionally speaking,
the two ingredients that contribute the most to the profile
of root beer are two that we might not be

(06:26):
very familiar with um in modern times. UM and that
being sassafras, which is a type of type of plant,
woody sort of plant. It's a it's what file is
made of, which goes into gumbo and stuff like that.
And uh yeah in in in this case, you're going
to be taking the bark of the root and so

(06:48):
you get this kind of like this like spicy, minty,
earthy sort of flavor out of it. UM and uh
sasparilla I think is more on the bitter herbal side.
It's a it's a vine um, and you might also
be using the skin or the or the bark of
the root on that one. I'm I'm not entirely sure, y'all.

(07:10):
Uh at this point. At this point, most root beer
recipes are like by root Beer extract from McCormick and
then and so you know, uh, but at any rate, um,
some places do market the same drink alternately as either
root beer or sasaparilla um. And I think sasaparilla is

(07:33):
what it's called frequently in countries outside of North America,
because yeah, this is like the first North American product
that I've seen like widely described as gross by the
international community. Really yeah, yeah. And the line of thinking
seems to be that that it reminds people of mouthwash

(07:56):
or like a one of those topical icy hot type rubs,
possibly because of the inclusion of ingredients like um, like
like winter green um that can contain um these mentally
sort of compounds like like methyl salice cyclate. So yeah,

(08:16):
reminds people of mount flash. Okay, that doesn't sound good.
I'm trying to keep an open mind. Oh gosh, um.
And although in many forms today it is uh, it
is nonalcoholic, you can make it alcoholic. It is traditionally
brewed like a beer, using friendly yeast to eat, sugars

(08:39):
and poop alcohol and carbon dioxide and flavor um. The
amount of alcohol in the final product was traditionally quite low,
like under three often under one percent, but it can
be produced so that it's higher. You can also make
root beer the non traditional way by um, by making
or buying a flavored concentrate and then adding carbon did

(09:00):
water or you know, adding still water and carbonating it
by forcing carbon dioxide into the next year in one
way or another. And yes, you can totally make it
at home. It sounds like you should. It sounds like
you should redo your first grade experiment. You know. I'm
I'm really curious to to you know, sort of like
sort of like a Morrow's there there you go. It's

(09:22):
sort of like the flavor profile of an Amorrow. Okay,
well I like Tomorrow. Yeah. This is so strange. I'm
so torn, and i feel like I'm being fulled in
different ways. I'm being fulled apart oh um yeah yeah,
well so yeah, I'm I'm like curious to like, try

(09:44):
to try to get all of these roots and herbs
and spices and sort of see what proportions of what
would make up a root beer flavor, because I've got
a very specific idea of what I wanted to be.
I like this. I think you should do it. I
think that there's kind of the way you're describing it.
I'm imagining it as very witchy, and I like that,

(10:07):
but also experimental. Yeah. Yeah, I do have a friend
who calls me the science, which so yes, that's perfect,
all right, and keep I want notes okay, okay, yeah
those posted in the meantime. What about the nutrition? It depends? Uh,

(10:27):
you know, it does tend to be a sugary drink
um and sugar should generally be treated as a treat.
And treats are nice, you know, enjoy them. Read read
your labels, though, you know, I I the empty calories
of soda can be quite caloric, so just you know,
be aware, be aware. A research has shown though, that

(10:49):
of common SODA's rootier tends to be less acidic and
therefore might be easier on your teeth than other sodas. Okay, yeah,
and some of them do come caffeinated, so if you
are caffeine sensitive, watch out for that. And yes, there
are some brands that are brewed to be alcoholic, um
though they are annie distinctly labeled and sold in the

(11:12):
beer section, not like two children. Nonetheless, drink responsibly like
root beer parentheses actual beer. It says like alcoholic and
we'll have like a percentage on the label like any

(11:33):
other I'm still suspicious. Um. Okay, so we do have
numbers for you. H A and W is the top
selling root beer in the world, and there are over
one thousand A and W restaurants around the world. And
I actually saw some estimates that were higher, So a lot,
a lot um the alcoholic brand not your father's root beer,

(11:58):
was technically the most popular craft beer of with one
point nine five million cases sold. Well that that shocks me,
but legitimately shocking too, Like I knew it was a thing,
but I didn't know it was that big of a thing. Yeah,

(12:18):
more and more on that later though. Um. As of one,
root beer is the most popular flavor of soda in Kentucky, Maine,
North Carolina, and South Dakota, according to eat This. Not
that that's an interesting assortment of states, right right, Yeah,
It's apparently a popular homebrew among Amish and other plane

(12:39):
sect communities. UM in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Roadside stands sell
thousands of bottles a year, two tourists coming through and
there is uh the root Beer Store in Washington State
that offers over one hundred root beers. And I really
enjoyed going through their site because they had this whole
section like, but what if I don't like root beer?

(13:01):
Other like, I get it. You have to have other
things for people who don't. But it was just funny
to meet it the root beer stores, like, but we
have other things. But there's cream soda, but a hundred
root beers. It's clearly a fan base. People like it. Yeah,
and there's an interesting history of how it came to
be and there is and we are going to get

(13:24):
into that as soon as we get back from a
quick break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Thank you sponsored, Yes, thank you. So. Indigenous North American
tribes made beverages, often medicinal nature that involved sassa fast

(13:46):
roots that served as the base of what would become
root beer. When European colonists arrived to North America, they
adapted these recipes and started making so called small beers,
using whatever was regionally available, including herbs and roots for bitterness.
While some of these beers were alcoholic, not all of
them were, or at least not not very. The idea

(14:08):
of small beers is that the amount of booze in
them is small. U. These days it's regulated as something
like more than zero but under three percent. I think
it's usually like, uh, one half of one percent to
two point eight percent is what you would consider a
small beer. But um, but one, folks say that in

(14:29):
ye old times people drank more beer than water. This
is the sort of beer they're usually talking about. And
it's beneficial as opposed to water because like well a,
it's flavored and mildly carbonated, which is fun. But also
you know you've boiled the water that you used in
making it, which can kill off some germs. Um, the
even low alcohol content can be anti microbial, and those

(14:52):
flavoring herbs that you added can be anti microbial. So
good times all around, right, um? Common small beers and
who did ginger beer, sasparilla birch beer, and root beer.
Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson all drank root beer,
and from what I gathered, they all had their like
specific recipes or a least George Washington, Thomas Jefferson did.

(15:14):
I don't know about Benjamin Franklin, but it seems like
a thing. By eight forty two, a few varieties of
root beer were being advertised in the Philadelphia area, many
as a health drink. These ads claimed it could act
as a blood pure fire, cure for summer complaint, and
a cure for cholera, as well as just generally boosting

(15:35):
your health. A Philadelphia based pharmacist by the name Charles
Elmer Hires frequently is credited with popularizing modern root beer.
Hires was born in fifty one, and the story goes
that while he was honey mooning in New Jersey, though
there's little to back up that detail. It's frequently included,

(15:56):
but little to back it up, he came up with
a recipe for a type of herbal t called to
sane um, which was he wanted it to be an
alternative to alcohol, and the primary ingredient to this recipe
was sassafras. It was so good that he decided to
package it and sell it as a dry mix. Ats

(16:17):
these packets, he yielded five gallons of finished product, but
um for the carbonation process to take place. The dry
mix had to be combined with water, east and sugar
and then given time to permit for it was ready
to drink. So a friend of his named Russell Conwell
suggested that Hires work on a liquid formula for this product,

(16:39):
something more convenient, and Conwell would later go on to
found a Temple University. By the way, Yeah, Hires got
to work developing a carbonated beverage. The end result utilized
twenty five roots, herbs, and berries, or sixteen depending on
the source. Uh. He debuted his creation called Hires root Beer.

(17:01):
They probably didn't put the extras on there, but that's
how I read it. Um at the eighteen seventy six
Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition, and people loved it. They loved it.
The family started selling bottled root beer in eighteen ninety three.
By nineteen o four, Hires developed a root beer syrup

(17:23):
for distribution. According to some accounts, um one and fifteen
thousand bottles of this product were sold in the first year,
and he called it the Great Health Drink. Some accounts
claimed that originally Hires was going to name his product
root t but figured he could attract a larger consumer

(17:44):
base with beer. Yes, yes, and depending on the source. Again,
this was because he was trying to capitalize on the
temperance movement in terms of here's a non boozy alternative
to beer, and or he knew the crowd in Pennsylvania
had a liking for beers, but beer in the name

(18:04):
cept Uh. Not a lot to back either of those up,
but both very funny. Some people involved in the temperance
movement attempted to get root beer band in despite the
fact that yes, it didn't contain alcohol or or had
these very low levels of it. However, it kind of
backfired and brought more attention to root beer, got more
people interested in it, and um Hires was a really

(18:30):
great advertiser, one of the first major and mass advertisers
in the beverage business. I think it's been one of
the most surprising things that this whole history of me
is how influential root beer has been in a lot
of ways when it comes to advertising and things we
take for granted, which we're going to get into. Yeah.
So he he was one of the first to take
out full page as had these trading cards created. Um,

(18:54):
the logo was featured on all sorts of items and
Hires himself and his rags to riches story, as he
told it, became a recurring element in these ads. Yeah,
and and going back to that like syrup thing. Apparently
that was another part of his whole deal was he
was like going around and making sure people knew at

(19:15):
these like soda fountains how to make his product, that
they had what they needed so that it could get
more attention and more people would buy it. Okay, so
I feel like this could be a whole separate episode,
but briefly, Colorado and Frank J. Wissner often gets the
credit for creating the root beer float in however, very

(19:38):
difficult to verify. The story goes he got the inspiration
from the rocky mountains, like snow capped rocky mountains. Okay, yeah, yeah,
I you know, with a lot of these uh soda
fountain and ice cream related stories, it's easy to imagine
that any number of human people took these two things

(19:58):
that they liked, and we're like, oh, what if I
just booped him right together? What if I just straight
booped him? What if I Strape booped him. Yeah, it's funny.
I totally agree. And it was funny to me that
the article that I got this information from was talking
about how it probably came from Chicago, and I had

(20:18):
to double like, do your double take because it's from Colorado.
So you're like, well, okay, sure, interesting twist, all right.
A series of root beer competitors, seeing the success of
hires product, followed soon after debuted in Barks root beer debuted,

(20:40):
the brainchild of Edward Bark. He bottled and sold his
product in Biloxi for the first time. In this root
beer contained less sugar and more carbonation than comparable products
at the time. Then, in nineteen nineteen, um IBC was
first created in St. Lewis Um. This was during prohibition

(21:01):
and it was intended as an alternative to booze right uh.
And then Roy Allen opened a root beer stand in
California in nineteen nineteen, handing out his first bottles that
year at a parade welcoming back Returning Soldiers. Alan partnered
with Frank wright In to form A and W root

(21:22):
Beer A for Allen and W for right Okay, Okay, yes, yes.
Alan bought Right out and trademarked the product. Alan started
franchising the following year, creating one of the first restaurant
chains in the United States. To this day, most A
and W's make their own root beer on side. Apparently

(21:43):
there was a brief period where they didn't, and then
everybody was like no, yeah, switch back, yeah. Yeah. Also
in ninety four, Stewart's brand started out as a root
beer stand in Mansfield, Ohio. I love this because there's
so many of these I've never heard of, because they
have no experiences root beer. And I'm like assuming that

(22:03):
people are listening and like, whoa, yeah that one. Oh yeah,
I guess so Stewart's is a is A is a
large brand up north, so pretty pretty familiar to many
people from that region. I shall take your word for it.
In the late nineteen thirties Chicago, Bernie Burns and Eli
Clapman arrived at the recipe for Dad's roop Beer and

(22:24):
Clapman's basement it came, and the now ubiquitous six pack packaging,
invented by the Atlanta Paper Company, one of the first
products sold this way. Yeah. The Belfast Beverage Company sold
what was first called Belfast root Beer in the nineteen forties.
The name later changed to Mug Old Fashioned root Beer

(22:47):
and then later to Mug root Beer. Um, this is
the brand that has the the the Bulldog mascot on
the can. And I ran into the endlessly fascinating fact
during my reading for this episode that the mascot's name
is dog. Straight to the point. It's like, you know,

(23:13):
when do we get you as your three year four
year old to name of pet dog A dog all
either like Stewart something in there. I love it. Um.
Jumping back a bit, and Washington State couple John and
Alice Marriott opened hot Shop, a root beer restaurant purchased

(23:36):
from A and W that grew popular enough to allow
the Marriotts to pivot into the hotel business. Now I
just stop myself from going down this rabbit hole because
it's like, we're not a hotel show, and a lot
of the like you know, one line explanation was A
and W led to the Marriott and I'm like, I'm
not sure quite how I get that they started there,

(23:57):
but I don't see the jump a Riot. It sounds
like they had enough success that it allowed them it
became pretty big. Yeah, I guess, Um, fascinating, fascinating in
a root beer and a hamburger stand named Sonic first
opened its doors. Now there are three thousand, five hundred

(24:19):
of them all over the US, all serving root beer,
and from what I understand, a lot of them in Texas. Uh.
I had no idea that Sonic started as a root
beer stand. Me either, Me either. I have a really
embarrassing story about Sonic where me and my friend we
were in high school and we didn't have cars, so
we we walked through the drive through of the Sonic

(24:42):
and ordered, and then we went and waited in a
parking spot. And then they were like, you know, just
could have just sat at the table and ordered that way,
There was no need. We were very tired. We've been
at six Flags all day. Oh yeah, yeah, yes, but

(25:03):
that was the last time I ate it. Savoc. The shame,
the shame, and stay with you. So as all of
these companies entered the root beer market, because we would
just gone through a lot of them, along with competing
products like sodas and sweets, root beer purveyors did struggle.

(25:26):
Non alcoholic root beers did benefit from prohibition and the
temperance movement, but so did those sodas um and uh
some did market some of these root beers were marketed
as medicinal. The f d A through wrench in that
for a lot of companies in nineteen sixty when it
labeled sassafast roots slash oil as a carcinogenic and banned

(25:50):
it from mass produced food and drug products because it
was a primary ingredient and many root beers. The root
beer industry took a hit. UM brewers reformulated their their
formulas with artificial flavoring in a lot of cases, or
other flavorings in the band sasa fast oil was lifted. Yeah,
it was, so what was going on here was that um.

(26:12):
Some research found that this primary compound in sassafrass, called
saffrole was indeed carcinogenic in rats when given to those
rats in large doses. And this compound is also found
um in stuff like nutmeg, cinnamon, black pepper, and sweet basil,
but it appears in much higher concentrations in sassafras oil. UM.

(26:36):
Some some root beer manufacturers worked out a way to
remove the saff role from sassafras oil so that they
could keep using it. But you know, it is one
of those kind of key flavor compounds in there. So um,
but I don't know from from what I've read, it's
basically like, well, don't drink over thirty five units of
root beer that contains saffrol every day because then you'll

(27:03):
probably get cancer. Okay, um, but I'm not sure why
you would. Yeah, there would be some questions I would have. Yeah.
In in general, this really brings us back around to
our saver slogan, which is, you know, bodies are complicated.
More research is necessary before ingesting a medicinal dose of anything.

(27:27):
Consult consult medical professional who is not us. No no, no, no,
no not us. Um yeah, yeah, I I yes, Like
I I think that the research that I've read is like, yes,
in high amounts, saffral is not good for you, but
probably what you're consuming through any product that contains it
is not enough to really worry about. So yeah, anyway, anyway, uh.

(27:53):
In twenty and W launched a petition to get Mere
in Webster to add the ampersand to the Alpha. But
that was another fun rabbit hole that I had to
stop myself because I I was reading out the history
the anfer Sand people are like, yeah, there's a precedent
for this. People were really passionate about it. It's still
it's still up there. Uh, it's got it's got hundreds
of thousands of signatures. Wow, that's great. That is a

(28:15):
specific form of nursery that I completely approve of. Jeez,
I really want that Grammar show one day, one day. Recently,
there has been a resurgence in homebrewing root beer yeah yeah, yeah,
along with the rest of the home brewing buzz. Um. Yeah,
root beer has been included in that, which is super fun. Um.

(28:36):
There has also been, like we were saying, uh in
our number section, this resurgence and hard root beers, um,
root beers with a discernible alcohol content. Um. Around a
few brands started really hitting the US market to this
impressive success. Um. This one brand, County Island Brewing Company. Um.

(28:57):
When when it's root beer debut at Whole Foods. Uh,
they were seeing a four growth rate in sales month
over month. Whoa yeah. Yeah. The folks responsible for another
leading branda, the aforementioned not your Father's root Beer. So
they went through seventy eight recipes over two years before

(29:17):
they came up with their brew um and they got
a distribution deal with passt um as in like PBR
and they made seven point two million dollars in sales
during the first half of which yeah like, and then
finished the year at number one the as technically the

(29:39):
number one craft beer in the country. Um. Though yeah,
there's some argument about whether it should have been considered
craft or beer. Um. Of course there was a whole
lot of like pearl clutching amongst craft beer writers that year.
I can see. I absolutely believe that they were like,

(30:00):
why is this product, which is essentially smear ingof ice
being called beer, and let alone something that's being distributed
by perhapst being called a craft beer. Um, get off
my lawn. Uh, get off my beer lawn? Yeah, right,
right right, which you know, which I which I understand

(30:22):
and and also don't understand. I'm like, all right, you know,
like like like what people like, what they like? Man,
But yeah, I feel like this is an opportunity to
this probably has already been done and I just don't
know about it, but to remake sideways but with beer,
you know, oh twenty Yeah, let's get someone, get Paul

(30:44):
g Amati on the line. Where's Paul. Somebody's got his number.
I believe I'm surprised that we don't already I know,
call us, yes, iron clad, guaranteed to succeed, just like uh,

(31:05):
this root beer, I guess you not your father's. Yeah, yeah,
I think I think it was. I think it was
a spike in popularity that has since calmed down a
little bit. But um but yeah, no, you can. You
can still find such products out there. Um yeah, I
happened to go grocery shopping this morning, and um, yeah,

(31:25):
I I bought. I bought a bottle of Jones soda
company root Beer. Not a sponsor, just a company that
I generally enjoy. I don't think I've tried the root before,
and I have not opened it yet. I'm looking forward
to that later. The craving is real. The craving is real,
and we have to I want to. I want to
get Like I wish that there wasn't COVID for many reasons,

(31:49):
but I but I want to get like seven different
kinds and like do like a taste test and you know,
kind of go through the the the damn it friend
root beer flavors, the root Beer Gamut. I'll get out
my fanos glove, which, by the way, I've used enough
that I had to replace the batteries. That's great, of

(32:10):
course you have. It's like, wait, this can't be possible.
Oh yeah, I guess so, like that's totally possible. I
don't know if that makes perfect sense that. No, I
definitely want to know what you think, and I'm wary,
but I want to try some I am wary. I
think that's fair. I think I think given that you

(32:30):
don't drink soda, that's true. I have to make an
exception to my rule. Work usually is an exception, and
that you have a grudge against one particular soda. I
just thinking about it, my blood is boiling. Yes, I
would crush that with my fan. That is a story

(32:53):
for a different day. Well, and also international listeners, I'm
really really curious if this is true or described of
like kind of this despising of root beer outside of
the United States. So let us know. Yeah, definitely yes,

(33:13):
But speaking of we do have some listener mail for you.
We do. But first we've got one more quick break
for a word from our sponsor. And we're back. Thank
you sponsored, Yes, thank you, And we're back with that's

(33:38):
what I missed the most about. So it's that first. Yeah,
the good, the good bright carbonation and like yeah, and
it kind of stung almost yeah, yeah, kind of like hot,
like like like like ginger spice kind of kick to it. Yeah,
m M. I have dreams about it sometimes. Uh. Red wrote,

(34:04):
your classic episode on toasting was wonderful, but you made
a crucial historical error. The raucous winter tradition of was sailing.
Sailing with sailing with sailing involves going around to your
neighbor's houses where they will give you drink and not
the other way around. It has ties back to feudalists
of Britain, where in the wintertime, wealthy landowners would reward

(34:27):
their workers with some big holiday parties. In a weird way,
this reinforced the social hierarchy. For this one special time
of year, the lower classes were treated like esteemed guest
and the wealthy would serve them. For a change. Over
the hundreds of years was sailing, it turned into bands
of roving partiers going to the rich neighborhoods and demanding

(34:49):
that they honor this old tradition. Imagine a bar crawl,
but the bars are your neighbor's houses. Surprise. In colonial Boston,
a group calling themselves the antics calls complaints such as
breaking furniture and making lude comments about the lady of
the house. Goodness. I know. In the nineteenth century, Victorians

(35:12):
sought to make Christmas more family friendly in general, and
they turned with sailing into caroling. They replaced the booze
with coffee and hot coco, and instead of running right
into your house, they would politely stay at your front door.
But that is why to this day, if carolers do
come to your door, you still feel compelled to give
them some Christmas cookies. It's a hold over from the

(35:34):
days of the Lord of the manner, providing them a feast.
I am lucky enough to be connected into the folk world,
and we actually keep the spirit of sailing alive and well,
with some modifications for modern society. Of course, every year
my friends hold a huge party at their house where
we feast and make merry. We sing the old sailing
songs of which there are many, and we make a

(35:56):
proper with sale flames and all that. You're sal way
to get the sweetener into your sale is to pile
sugar cubes on a rack over a big old bowl
of red wine. Then take a warm, cordial mixture of
dark spirits and winter spices and pour it over the sugar,
dassing it. Then grab a match, light the surface of

(36:17):
the punch bowl on fire, and slowly and carefully laidle
the punch over the flaming pile of caramelizing sugar. We
make a big batch, so it takes quite a while
for all the sugar to melt away and the flames
to die down, usually about four songs. I've included some
photos to try to give you a feel for the experience. Unfortunately,
COVID has ruined all in person folk singing, so we

(36:37):
had to throw a virtual substitute this past Christmas, and
hopeful that next year we will be able to once
more gather around the flaming was sab bowl and raise
therafters with our songs. All that's so amazing. I hope
so too. Yeah, I would love to attend this. I
should not be in charge of flame ever, but I
can watch from afar. Yeah, sing terribly enthusiastically enthusiastically. Yes,

(37:06):
that's the more important part. Yeah. No, I like this
idea of um fire booze at old timey karaoke. This
sounds yes, that sounds perfect. Yes, And I do love
I love how there's so many traditions and in this
context around food and drink where we just take for

(37:27):
granted like it's this holdover from some ancient like the
feudalist Britain, and it's what it has it evolved into
over time and just the history of that, And it
kind of reminds me of Halloween, where you would pick
out the best houses of the best camp, even if
it wasn't your neighborhood, that's where you'd go, especially if

(37:47):
it wasn't your neighborhood. Yeah, that's what it reminds me of.
But this sounds like a great time. Yeah, oh gosh,
Todd wrote, I have a long relationship with dandelion. My
degree is in botany and I've always been interested in
wild plants enterbology. The first scientific name of a plant
I memorized was okay uh composite terra zacum, a fish

(38:10):
and aale. In the sixth grade uh uh. In Boy Scouts,
I learned to cook and eat dandelion. In the late eighties.
I worked in the North of England and would often
shop Sainsbury's, buy a two lead bottle for nine pence
and enjoy a chilled glass of dandelion and burdock soft
drink on a hot summer day. I love pentamins, but
at nearly three dollars of bottle, I really miss the

(38:31):
good old days of being in England. If you go
foraging around your neighborhood with the idea of gathering and
eating some fresh dandelion greens, you really need to be
aware of where they're growing. Since they are a most
hated plant, they often get sprayed with one kind of
an herbicide or another. They're also bioaccumulators. They might contain
herbicides from the current season for spraying, or they may
also contain toxins from chemical residues contained in the soil.

(38:55):
That is one reason they're so expensive and fancy eateries.
Restaurants need to buy certified or game product or from
a forager that collects from relatively safe areas that don't
get sprayed. A little fy i thing to share with
you about how dandelion seeds spread and implant themselves. The
dispersal by wind is obvious, but the really cool thing
is that they are programmed for finding optimum environmental conditions

(39:18):
to grow. You can see in the diagram that was
attached that the that the seed is pointed and barbed,
as the Papa's disc carries the dandelion seed hither and
yonn When it senses an area of high humidity at
the correct temperature, the Papa's disc actually folds up like
an inverted umbrella, so the whole thing is kind of

(39:38):
arrow shaped. The dandelion seed plummets to the ground and
hopefully embeds itself with its pointy barbed seed into the
soil that provides the correct environment for germination. The barbs
help the seeds stay in place until it con germinate,
root and grow in its new home. That's so cool.
That is so cool. I was just U, I was

(40:00):
just house sitting for somebody, and unlike me, she actually
has a yard and a bunch of dandelions in it.
And I every time I saw what I'd be like
respect dandelion. I got so much respect for you. Oh yes, yes,
oh goodness, that is delightful. Thank you always sending botany notes.

(40:22):
Oh please, yes, um. Thanks to both of those listeners
for writing in. If you would like to write to us,
you can our emails Hello at savor pot dot com.
We are also on social media. You can find us
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do hope to hear from you. Savor is a production
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you can visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

(40:44):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as
always to our superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks
to you for listening, and we hope that lots more
good things are coming your waywo