Back in October a friend of mine came up to NY from Philly, and with her she brought me a very lovely hostess gift: Root Liquor made by Philly collective of sorts, Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It’s been sitting on my counter for months (I have been waiting for a special occasion to open it), and well, yesterday seemed appropriate.  Plus, the Times wrote a little blurb on it a few days ago, so I figured I may as well write about it now before it becomes passe.

I don’t know about you, but I loved root beer floats as a child.  I have very vivid memories of drinking them on humid summer afternoons while visiting my grandma in Chicago.  The website for this Root stuff has a bunch of different recipes, but I wanted to make a classic root beer float, which is just root beer and vanilla ice cream.

I used the Root liquor as a syrup base (as if I were making a soda) and combined it with seltzer water. Then I gently mixed the two together (if you stir it too much your glass will over flow), and added ice cream. The result: root beer float for adults.  As far as the flavor goes, the Root has a strong sassafras flavor, but also has a slight bitterness due to the alcohol content (the sweetness of the ice cream really cancels out any bitterness, so don’t let that scare you away).  I recommend making one of these if you want to feel like a kid again.  I will definitely be ordering more of this stuff come summer time…..