The Rise and Fall of Hires Root Beer: The Drink Its Own Owner Destroyed

Root beer is called beer, but there's no alcohol in it, and it's brewed from actual tree roots pulled out of the ground. This is the story of Hires Root Beer, the drink that basically invented the flavor a whole country grew up on. A Quaker farm boy from a New Jersey farm turned a muddy backwoods remedy into America's first nationally advertised soft drink, bigger than Coca-Cola, sold by the hundreds of millions of glasses. Then, after nearly a hundred and fifty years, it quietly vanished from shelves. No headline. No goodbye. From the twenty-five-cent home-brew kit to the soda fountain golden age, the temperance boycott, the sassafras cancer ban, and the corporate neglect that finally killed it, here's the rise and fall of the Root Beer King. If you remember that foaming mug at the drugstore counter, tell us in the comments where you were when you drank it. Subscribe for more stories about the great American brands that shaped growing up, the ones that made it and the ones we lost. New nostalgia documentaries every week. #HiresRootBeer #RootBeer #Nostalgia #SodaFountain #AmericanHistory #RetroSoda #VintageAmerica #FoodHistory #TheGoodOldDays #SodaHistory #1950s #Americana #DrugstoreMemories #ForgottenBrands #HistoryDocumentary