# Sassafras Root



## ch1719 (Apr 13, 2016)

I was just given 1 oz. of dried, ground sassafras root. What can I do with it?


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## Andy M. (Apr 13, 2016)

Make sassafras tea.  It will taste like root beer.


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## Katie H (Apr 13, 2016)

Yum!  I love sassafras tea.  Grew up having it all the time but that's because I lived in the country and it was easily available.

It's tasty and the color of the water is a beautiful salmon color.  Enjoy it.  You were given something delicious.

If it is ground, all you need to do is to put it into a "bag" you can fashion out of a paper coffee filter or, if you have one, put it into a fine mesh metal tea ball.  Steep in boiling water.  I add some sugar when I make mine.  Do what suits you since this is something new.


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## ch1719 (Apr 13, 2016)

Is there a way I could ferment or carbonate it to make a sort of root beer?


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## Dawgluver (Apr 13, 2016)

Maybe use seltzer.  Or if you have a SodaStream machine, that would work too.


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## Steve Kroll (Apr 13, 2016)

ch1719 said:


> Is there a way I could ferment or carbonate it to make a sort of root beer?



Here you go...
DIY Root Beer | Serious Eats

I've made homemade ginger beer before, but haven't tried the root beer recipe.


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## Aunt Bea (Apr 14, 2016)

We made it just once! 

We used a recipe similar to this one and we opted for the extract.  We washed the brown beer bottles, capped them using an old hand capping machine, put them on the shelf, waited and waited until one day we went into the basement and found several of the bottles had exploded.  We had a cupboard covered with sticky broken glass!  I felt like I was part of a bomb disposal team as I removed the caps from the remaining bottles! 

Guide to Making Old-Fashioned Root Beer - Real Food - MOTHER EARTH NEWS


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## Steve Kroll (Apr 14, 2016)

Aunt Bea said:


> We used a recipe similar to this one and we opted for the extract.  We washed the brown beer bottles, capped them using an old hand capping machine, put them on the shelf, waited and waited until one day we went into the basement and found several of the bottles had exploded.  We had a cupboard covered with sticky broken glass!  I felt like I was part of a bomb disposal team as I removed the caps from the remaining bottles!


 This has happened at least once to EVERY home winemaker I've ever known. 

I now add food grade potassium sorbate (a yeast inhibitor used widely in the food industry) to everything I bottle that contains residual sugar. It's either that or sterile filter it, which is pretty much impossible without the proper equipment. Some people occasionally ask me "Why not boil it?" My answer is that there are some things you simply can't pasteurize without severely impacting the flavor.


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