The revenuers asked the children to show them what their mother brewed, and they were taken to a cupboard of hand-capped bottles of Tata’s root beer, which the children proudly poured to show off the golden brown liquid with a thick foamy white head.

My Aunt Penny always had something brewing in her cellar, from raspberry brandy and hard cider to birch beer and root beer. Explosions happened on a regular basis, as yeast was used for fermentation as well as for carbonation, and pressure would build up in jugs until uncorking or glass breaking would release the extra gas. Taste tests were a requirement and a joy on visits, with her root beer as my favorite beverage as a young boy.

After I graduated college, I made a quest of tasting all the hundreds of root beer brands on the shelves to rediscover those early tastes of Aunt Penny’s root beer. Sadly, none came even close, so I retraced my Aunts’ footsteps in home brewing to rediscover the unique taste of the hand-crafted beverage.  I found that forced carbonated beverages of today lose the full-mouth feel that naturally-brewed beverages have, and had quite a few explosions in my own kitchen. As I would open a new bottle, a large plastic bag was placed overtop it to avoid overspray onto my waiting daughters, who delighted in cowering behind chairs at each exciting opening. My children dubbed that well-used bag ‘The Baboosh Bag’ for the sound the root beer would make when opened and ‘babooshed’ upwards into the bag.  

Eventually, I perfected the timing and measurements so opening a new bottle wasn’t quite the event it once had been. The Baboosh Bag was retired, and multitudes of roots, barks and spices were narrowed down to the current secret recipe of Iceberg Root Beer.  Finally, I had perfected what I remembered as a child of Aunt Penny’s homemade root beer, with all the taste, mouth-feel and aroma that was like no other I had ever tasted.