welcome friends welcome back to another in our series on pop and today we're
going to make sarsaparilla a lot of people have asked for sarsaparilla we
did root beer a little while ago and I wasn't gonna do sarsaparilla because to
me sarsaparilla is just a form of root beer and I started to do some research
on it and realized that if you ask a hundred
people about sarsaparilla you're going to get a hundred different answers
everyone has a different opinion on what it is what should be in it where it came
from how it originated it got really confusing and I thought okay so I'm
going to I'm gonna pick a couple of recipes I'm gonna sort of look at them
all figure out if there's a common thread and we're gonna make one so the
common thread in sarsaparilla is that you use sarsaparilla root so this is
ground sarsaparilla root or chopped sarsaparilla root because it's not it's
not a fine powder we use this in our root beer and it has that it has that
root beer smell or or flavor to it now you would think that a drink called
sarsaparilla always had sarsaparilla in it and a lot of people I talked to said
no the original sarsaparilla is were made with sassafras and sarsaparilla
wasn't added until later which kind of freaks me out a little bit because then
what is root beer and you know why would it be called sarsaparilla if it didn't
have sarsaparilla in it at the beginning
and I don't have an answer for that I you know completely boggles my mind I'm
confused about it I've read and I've read and I've read and I've dug deep and
I've gone to the historical libraries and I can't figure it out but the other
thing that people seem to agree on though is that it also contains birch
bark so I'm going to put birch bark in now we've got water and the birch bark
and the sarsaparilla root in this pot I don't want to bring it to a boil but I
do want to bring it up to just about a boil and then we're going to take it off
the heat and let it steep for probably half an hour to 45 minutes okay so this
is steeped now we need to strain it so I've got a fine mesh strainer
into another pot and let me just get a spoon here we need to strain this out
and you're gonna notice if you make this that there is a lot more root than
liquid this should give us a really strong flavor so in it goes and just
pull all the root in as well into the strainer and what I'm going to do is
just let this sit and drain for probably another 25 or 30 minutes just to make
sure that we get all of the liquid out of these roots okay we're going to put
this back on the heat and this is where we add in the sugar so this is cane
sugar we're going to put this in here we've got the heat at about a medium
medium-high and we just want to heat this to the point where the sugar is
fully dissolved okay this looks good I think the sugar is fully dissolved so
I'm going to put it into this measuring cup and I'm going to add some citric
acid that'll just give it a little bit of a bite and it will also act as a
preservative sort of last longer in the fridge now I'm just gonna stick this in
the fridge and let it chill down before we taste it
yeah
sarsaparilla needs a bit of a stir okay so my pouring in my mixing are still
maybe a little suspect does look like a lovely light lager though it does so I
didn't add any coloring in I just wanted to go with flavor no color okay I can
tell I can recognize the smell it's got strong flavor mm-hmm it's kind of
amazing how different it is from a root beer root beer that one ingredient just
changes it completely yeah it's quite interesting I don't know that I've ever
had sarsaparilla well we have how does it make me feel like I'm in a Western to
have sarsaparilla cuz the cowboy always comes in there's a and there's a great
scene in The Big Lebowski where he bellies the bellies up to the bar and he
asked for a sarsaparilla yeah you gotta give sarsaparilla Sioux
City sarsaparilla yeah good guys forgotten this but that's okay
okay so this is a commercially made sarsaparilla and it is dark because they
add caramel color and I could have put caramel color in but decided not to okay
yeah same smell different flavor completely different flavor
completely different smell I've got caramel in it yeah a lot of caramel
flavor in that isn't there okay interesting I just the caramel
flavor it just I find that interesting yes it makes it lovely but it makes it
oddly enough it has more of a root beer you kind of flavor to it yeah I I think
if your ex is the sarsaparilla that you would normally do both of them I did I
can't go back that's okay okay that's I wasn't thinking we can pour another one
sure we we have we have the technology okay so I just added acid phosphate
which we found usually feel the flavor of men changes the flavor so
I don't know that it did change the flavor that much no not this time
it might have softened it a bit but it didn't you didn't kind of fill it in the
way it did for I'm gonna put some of the other things that we've tried for
another scoop okay so these two sarsaparilla c-couldn't tastes more
different so this is what you're used to drinking this may not be your recipe but
that being said it's another very sweet soda yeah I mean the pop whatever you
want to call it this is I need to call it a soda
the sarsaparilla flavor is there but it's lacking the caramel flavor that's
in this one mm-hmm
you know what I bet if you put that beside all of those root beers that we
drink most people wouldn't tell that from a root beer maybe uh it's hard to
tell with that one right I mean so what is the evolution so I think what is the
evolution of sarsaparilla and root beer that this is gonna take more work you
can do a claim I think I can do it okay so I believe in you at some point we
will come back to sarsaparilla and keep working on it add more caramel flavor
because I as I said I think this is the gold standard
everyone cites this one as the one that is that is great and I mean it says
right on the bottle it's the granddaddy of all root beers it's good though yeah
I good I do like it too so take a look for sarsaparilla again in the future
thanks for stopping by see you again soon take care
you