Maggie's Farm

In the late 40's I can remember my father used to make root beer. He would use any soda bottles and he had his own bottle capper. He would keep them in our cool basement for a few weeks to ferment/finish. I can still hear the sound of a bottle of root beer in the basement breaking under the pressure. As I remember you have to hold the newly made root beer in a large crock for a few days or so until most of the fermenting is done and then bottle it. If you misjudge and bottle too soon it will ferment off enough CO2 to blow up. I also remember that the best way to open them was in the basement before you even moved the bottle. It was cool and unshaken and would usually barely foam over the lip of the bottle. But if you brought it upstairs or worse allowed it to get warm it would fizz and bubble over worse than any Champagne and leave you with half a bottle of kinda flat root beer.

One of the local beverage bottlers sold a sarsaparilla but I don't think they spelled it that way. It lacked the rich creamy flavor of a good root beer.