The Root Beer Hub

My Personal Tier List

No math, no statistics, just pure subjective preference. Drag and drop root beers from the unranked pool into your custom tiers, or use the ↕ dropdown menu on any root beer card if you are on a mobile device!

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Unranked Pool

Every root beer in your Vault starts here. Drag them up to a tier!

The Root Beer Map

Explore where the world's most legendary root beers are brewed. Click on a mug to see which root beers originate from that state or country.

The Root Beer Vault

Explore the full database. Click on any root beer to view its profile, history, price, and personal tasting notes.

The Official Scoreboard

💡 Click on any of the table headers to dynamically sort the rankings!

The History of Root Beer

Root beer is a deeply traditional North American beverage. Traditionally made using the root bark of the sassafras tree or the vine of Smilax ornata (sarsaparilla) as the primary flavor, it boasts a complex profile of earthy, sweet, and spiced notes. However, its origins stretch back much further than early America.

Ancient Roots & Small Beers

The concept of brewing botanical roots and herbs dates back millennia. As early as 1265 in the British Isles, a naturally fizzy soft drink called Dandelion and Burdock was being consumed. During the Middle Ages, urban sanitation was exceedingly poor, rendering much of the water supply unsafe to drink. To stave off deadly illness, Europeans turned to brewing "small beers" (beverages with very low alcohol content, typically 2-12%) using available berries, bark, and herbs. The boiling process killed pathogens, and the low alcohol content acted as a preservative. When Pilgrims and early colonial settlers arrived in North America, they lacked traditional grains like barley, so they turned to locally abundant ingredients—like sassafras and sarsaparilla—to brew their small beers.

From "Root Tea" to "Root Beer"

In the mid-19th century, pharmacists began serving flavored soda waters as health tonics at their drugstore counters. The modern commercial version of root beer is largely credited to a Philadelphia pharmacist named Charles Elmer Hires. While on his honeymoon in New Jersey, Hires discovered a delicious herbal "tisane" (tea). He developed a proprietary dry mixture of 16 wild roots and berries and initially planned to call it "Root Tea." However, aiming to appeal to the working-class Pennsylvania coal miners, his friend Russell Conwell suggested calling it "Root Beer." The masculine appeal worked perfectly. Hires debuted his beverage at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition to raving reviews, and by 1893, his family was selling the first commercially mass-bottled root beer.

The Temperance Movement & Prohibition

Because it was called "beer," the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) quickly launched a campaign to ban Hires' beverage. Hires, a prominent Quaker and strict teetotaler, hired an independent laboratory to analyze his root beer. The results proved that a glass of his root beer contained less alcohol than half a loaf of bread! Using this to his advantage, Hires heavily marketed his root beer as "The Temperance Drink." During the Prohibition Era of the 1920s, soft drinks became the premier social alternative to alcohol, cementing root beer as an American cultural staple.

The 1960 FDA Pivot

For centuries, the key ingredient to root beer was sassafras root, which produced its tangy, thick brewed flavor. However, in 1960, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) banned the commercial use of safrole—the naturally occurring volatile oil found in sassafras—labeling it a potential carcinogen. This forced the entire root beer industry to pivot overnight. Brewers scrambled to invent new, safrole-free sassafras extracts and began relying heavily on wintergreen, licorice, and vanilla blends to mimic the traditional bite.

Birth of the American Fast Food Chain

Root beer's immense popularity actually birthed several massive hospitality empires. In 1927, John and Alice Marriott opened a small, nine-stool A&W root beer stand in Washington, D.C., called the "Hot Shoppe." That tiny root beer stand expanded over the decades into the massive global Marriott Hotel chain. Similarly, Sonic Drive-In began as a simple root beer and hamburger stand. By 1960, there were over 2,000 A&W restaurants nationwide—which was more locations than McDonald's had at the time!

Brew Your Own

Basic Homemade Root Beer Extract Recipe

• 1/4 oz wintergreen leaf
• 1/4 oz licorice root
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 oz sarsaparilla root
• 2 cups water
• 2 cups pure cane sugar (or to taste)
• Carbonated water (club soda)

Instructions: Simmer the roots and leaves in the water for 20 minutes to extract the botanical oils. Strain the liquid through a fine mesh or cheesecloth. Return the liquid to a low heat, stirring in the sugar and vanilla until fully dissolved to create a heavy syrup. Let it cool. Mix your homemade syrup with chilled carbonated water to taste, pour over ice, and enjoy!