Root Beer and Sarsaparilla

Colonel: My father would bring be back when the place was called Cedar Hollow and he would do his business there. It was a little country store and he would buy me a bottle of sarsaparilla. And I would sit there, a little 10 year-old kid, while they were doing business, drinking my sarsaparilla. But it never became popular until occasionally it could be found, here and there.

Michelle: Didn’t your mother make it as well?

Colonel: Not the sarsaparilla, she made root beer.

Sara: I think everyone made root beer! My brothers did!

Michelle: I didn’t know that! Was it carbonated?

Colonel: Yeah, it was with yeast. “east” you pronounce it “east” but it is Y-E-A-S-T. And you would put that in it, put it out in the sun to ferment, cap it tight, and then take it in and let it sit for three days and then it was carbonated. Now, let’s have a root beer float!