Ok - this is something I have experimented with before. Making root beer the traditional way is possible at home, as is buying or harvesting sassafras.
Sassafras tastes and smells very much like root beer, as you would expect, except "more". That is the best way I can describe it. It has a flavor profile that is more complete than what you get in standard root beers. As the above article states, it is pretty difficult to get a satisfactory extract from it. The smell of the root/bark is great, but the concentration/taste of the brewed liquid is very difficult to gauge. It requires significant amounts of sugar to make it taste "like root beer".
To get around the challenges with Safrole, the root beer industry turned first to Wintergreen, which is a very similar flavor profile, and it is wintergreen,or artificial wintergreen that makes up the bulk of modern day commercial root beers. Boutique makers also include vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and other botanicals to get a flavor they want, but Wintergreen is the key to modern root beer. Many online recipes include many of these ingredients too. I've never had much luck with them.
I've made some of these myself before, and always had an exceptional difficulty getting the flavors to be concentrated enough to even approach the commercial stuff - perhaps my ingredients or methods were sub-par. I always wanted to get a mixture that I could make strong enough without making it too sweet. The difficulty there is that it is hard to make any mixture strong enough to mix with carbonated water, or, it is hard to carbonate by fermentation without adding significant amounts of sugar.(over time, I've made probably 10 attempts at this, and bought several hundred dollars worth of ingredients/equipment. I've had much better luck with real beer.)
Finally, as a caveat, do not attempt to eat or cook with any wintergreen oil, or wintergreen essential oil. It is almost pure Methyl Salicylate - According to wikipedia, 1 fl oz of wintergreen oil is equivalent to taking 55g of aspirin, equivalent to 171 adult sized tablets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintergreen
I bought a legit sarsaparilla mix with some friends years ago and made it using dry ice. Worked out fairly well. But in general sarsaparilla root beer is a lot better than regular root beer.
The flavor profile is just.. different. Maybe has a kind of spiciness that root beer lacks. Definitely worth trying.
Sassafras tastes and smells very much like root beer, as you would expect, except "more". That is the best way I can describe it. It has a flavor profile that is more complete than what you get in standard root beers. As the above article states, it is pretty difficult to get a satisfactory extract from it. The smell of the root/bark is great, but the concentration/taste of the brewed liquid is very difficult to gauge. It requires significant amounts of sugar to make it taste "like root beer".
To get around the challenges with Safrole, the root beer industry turned first to Wintergreen, which is a very similar flavor profile, and it is wintergreen,or artificial wintergreen that makes up the bulk of modern day commercial root beers. Boutique makers also include vanilla, cinnamon, ginger, and other botanicals to get a flavor they want, but Wintergreen is the key to modern root beer. Many online recipes include many of these ingredients too. I've never had much luck with them.
I've made some of these myself before, and always had an exceptional difficulty getting the flavors to be concentrated enough to even approach the commercial stuff - perhaps my ingredients or methods were sub-par. I always wanted to get a mixture that I could make strong enough without making it too sweet. The difficulty there is that it is hard to make any mixture strong enough to mix with carbonated water, or, it is hard to carbonate by fermentation without adding significant amounts of sugar.(over time, I've made probably 10 attempts at this, and bought several hundred dollars worth of ingredients/equipment. I've had much better luck with real beer.)
Finally, as a caveat, do not attempt to eat or cook with any wintergreen oil, or wintergreen essential oil. It is almost pure Methyl Salicylate - According to wikipedia, 1 fl oz of wintergreen oil is equivalent to taking 55g of aspirin, equivalent to 171 adult sized tablets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintergreen