In 1602, an English explorer sailed home with a valuable cargo of sassafras root — and Sir Walter Raleigh seized the entire shipment using a royal trade patent, years before he ever set foot in North America himself. That's the real story behind an ingredient that went on to define an entire American beverage category, until the FDA banned it outright in 1960 over links to liver tumors. Root beer never stopped tasting the way it does. The actual plant responsible just isn't in it anymore.
This episode traces sassafras from Indigenous medicine and Choctaw filé powder, through a Philadelphia pharmacist's marketing gamble that built Hires' root beer empire, to the modern legal patchwork that makes the same plant simultaneously a controlled DEA precursor chemical and something you're free to forage in your own backyard. Along the way: a real 1672 colonial beer recipe pulled straight from a primary source, and two working bars — one in Brooklyn, one in Aspen — still using the real thing behind the counter today.
Full show notes, research sources, and transcript at thealchemistsbar.com.
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