Dear Group, Someone on my PADUTCH-LIFE list reminisced about his mother making homemade root beer back around 1913 in Pennsylvania and I just responded to that list with the following. I'm sharing it with you because my own family incident regarding homemade root beer occurred on Macklem Ave., Niagara Falls, NY. Ah, yes, memories! vee Harold's message about homemade root beer reminded me of a message I sent to the old Penna-Dutch list back in November 1997. At that time we had a similar conversation on the list about root beer and Gordon remembered the time that their own batch of root beer exploded in their cellar. I responded by sharing my own memories as follows: EXPLODING ROOT BEER Gordon posted his memories about his memories regarding the mess that homemade root beer can cause and I immediately burst out in loud laughter, gaffaws and such! Oh, yes, indeedy do! Exploding root beer!! I remember it well! I remember it so vividly. Our family was having a civilized dinner in the dining room in the 1940s when all of a sudden there was a loud "pop" from overhead--the attic, not Gordon's cellar! Mother turned to Daddy, Daddy turned to Mother, both of them wondered what had happened and then, almost in unison, they exclaimed, "The root beer!" Now, I wasn't involved with cleaning up the mess but I guess this is what happened. Back then, first off you bought a small bottle of concentrated Hire's Root Beer extract. And I don't know what you mixed it with but whatever it was, you poured the mixture into what were catchup(?) bottles, you positioned the bottle underneath the metal bottle capper contraption, made certain you had the new bottle cap in the right position and then clamped the cap onto the bottle. And then you stored the filled bottles either in Gordon's cellar or our attic and waited until it "ripened" or "aged" or "fermented or whatever it was supposed to do before you got to open that first bottle of the most delicious bottle of root beer you've ever tasted! Now, obviously, things can go wrong with root beer just as they go wrong with sauerkraut. But when things go wrong with root beer, it's like the Fourth of July! Not is there only one "pop," but that one is followed by the whole nine yards of exploding root beer all over the attic/Gordon's cellar! Trust me, you better get your root beer makins down just right before you even want to try to brew your own! But when you do, I guarantee you that it will be the best root beer you've ever tasted!