Erica Williams, age 12, of Fredrickton, New Brunswick, Canada, for her question:

What do they use to flavor root beer?

A century ago, Charles Hires and his new bride stopped to ask for a drink at a farmhouse in the countryside of New Jersey. The farmer’s wife served them a delicious herb tea made from her own recipe. She had concocted an unforgettable blend from wild berries and roots. The ingredients included extracts of wild tipsissewa and peppy sarsaparilla, fragrant spikenard, tangy hops and wintergreen. Each of these herbs merged its own distinctive flavor to create the superb new blend of flavors. The thirsty visitors decided that others must share it. Six years later, at the Philadelphia Centennial, this new and very different beverage was introduced to the world as root beer.

This delightful honeymoon story was told to Andy by the people who have been making root beer for 100 years. Naturally, your reporter did not expect them to divulge all their secrets. But he learned that there are 16 ingredients in the famous flavor, including the same herbs used in the original recipe. By the way, root beer is a soft drink not even distantly related to the beers that contain alcohol