I was confused as I nosed the pint of fizzy brown liquid. It smelled like the best ol' fashioned root beer on planet earth. But when I went in for a sip, what I tasted was clearly beer. Bitter, roasty, slightly creamy, alcoholic beer. I did it again. Sniff, root beer. Taste, beer beer.

For a lack of a more professional flavor descriptor, it was a total mindfuck.

The beer I was sipping was called Forbidden Root which is also the name of this new Chicago brewery, one focused on crafting strictly botanical-based beers.

"What does that exactly mean: botanical?"

I was drinking at Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village with Robert Finkel, a successful finance guy whose obsession with botanicals led him to quit his day job and launch Forbidden Root in 2014. (His business card lists him as "Rootmaster.")

"'Botanical' is just a catch-all for plants, herbs, roots, flowers..."

"So are hops botanicals?" I wondered.

Indeed they are, but Forbidden Root has a slightly more ambitious focus than that most standard of beer ingredients. Yes, their beers do have a small amount of hops in them purely for bittering purposes, but that's the least interesting botanical in any offering. With brewing help from Randy Mosher, the famed author of Tasting Beer, and accomplished homebrewer B.J. Pichman, Finkel and the Forbidden Root team have spent the last two years trying to figure out what botanicals might actually work in a modern beer.

So far they've released beers made with ginger, honeybush, and lemon myrtle for Sublime Ginger; black walnuts, licorice, roasted chestnuts, star anise, and tellicherry pepper for their porter, Shady Character; and even Elderflower, Marigold, and Sweet Osmanthus flowers for WPA, their "Wildflower Pale Ale."

In the case of that root beer-esque Forbidden Root, natural extracts like wintergreen, cassia, nutmeg, licorice, vanilla, sandalwood, cardamon, and black pepper are used. (Sassafras was long used in traditional root beers but has been banned in America since 1960 due to cancer concerns.)

When slugging an A&W or a Barq's, I don't think many of us ever think about the actual name for what we're drinking. Root beer. A beer made of roots. Yes, you may not realize it, but in the past this much-beloved drink was alcoholic.

"My initial inspiration came from root beer, which was once brewed like real beer with numerous herbs and roots," Finkel told me. "We have taken what we think are the best elements of those many old recipes and used some additional techniques such as oak aging, to create our fantasy of what slid down the table after barking, 'Barkeep, a cold sarsaparilla.'"

So what happened to those kinds of drinks?

"In modern times, beer lost its botanicals, except for hops, and root beer evolved into today's soft drink," Finkel explains. You see, artificial carbonation came about in the 19th century and all of the sudden it was easier to make a "soda," than sit around waiting for fermentation to do its work. So, in a way, you could blame Coca-Cola and Dr. Pepper for the fact that root beer no longer gets you tipsy.

Finkel is not the only brewmaster getting geeky over roots. In Illinois, Small Town Brewery has found a massive hit with what they call Not Your Father's Root Beer ... yes, an alcoholic root beer. They currently have three versions, more limited 10.7% and 19.5% ABV ones mostly seen on tap, and their flagship 5.9% bottled offering, crafted with such botanicals as vanilla, cinnamon, wintergreen, sarsaparilla bark, and anise.

It currently scores in the 96th percentile on BeerAdvocate.com and has long been hot trade bait on the secondary market. Perhaps that's because, unlike Forbidden Root, Not Your Father's Root Beer tastes exactly like root beer, devilishly if not dangerously so. Tasting it, it's hard to believe it's not a soft drink and I'm almost shocked the TTB hasn't had a hissy fit over it. (Who will think of the children?!)

In a way, though, it's helped open up a new market for, for lack of a better term, aspiring beer drinkers. As Small Town claims, "It appeals to craft beer aficionados as well as those who don't typically drink beer but crave something unique." But not everyone is a fan. An apocryphal story has Binny's, the massive beverage depot in Chicago, mocking the quasi-beer offering while showing their own preference for Forbidden Root by putting it on an endcap with the sign "Not Not Your Father's Root Beer."

The midwest, in fact, seems to be the epicenter for the alcoholic root beer wars. In Milwaukee, Sprecher's, a long-respected brewery and soda-maker, makes something they call Hard Root Beer (they also have Hard Ginger Beer). Though it sells well—they promote it as "Not Your Granddaddy's Root Beer," well OK!—it has yet to attract beer connoisseurs and scores fairly poorly on beer review websites. (They also make a bourbon barrel-aged version called Bootlegger's which sounds much better than it is.) Likewise, Missouri's Weston Brewery makes Row Hard Root Beer which comes in cans. Meanwhile, out on the west coast, Mission Brewery in San Diego also makes Hard Root Beer, encouraging patrons to "Serve over ice or with a scoop of ice cream and enjoy."

Not surprisingly, Finkel thinks most of these hard root beers are nothing more than sugary, artificial gimmicks, each no more a craft beer than a bottle of Mike's Hard Lemonade.

"Other breweries may put out a botanic flavor to be on trend, but it's not their life's sole pursuit, as it is ours." He went on, "As we have continued success, we will no doubt see others mimic aspects of botanic brewing. We work every day in the hopes that our work will serve as a source of inspiration."

I'm certainly inspired to drink a six-pack of root beer for the first time in decades. Heck, I might just even have a float.

Aaron Goldfarb Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is a novelist and the author of 'Hacking Whiskey.'

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