Root Beer Floats

Root beer floats are a really fun treat and a very popular dessert that has been around for many years. They go by many other names too in different countries such as a float, a spider, brown cow, black cow and so on. It’s typically characterized as a beverage that is severed with a soft drink or a mixture of flavored syrup and carbonated water. In the United Kingdom this is typically done with ream soda but in the US it’s more common for root beer to be used. This is a fun and unique drink because of the air bubbles in the soda that cause the ice cream to float in it and the “foamy head” that is similar to what beer has. It was originally invented by Robert M Green in Philadelphia in 1874 during the sesquicentennial celebration. The legend behind it is that Green ran out of ice during a very hot day to keep his soda cold with and used ice cream from a neighboring vendor to keep it cold. His own account states that he wanted to create a new treat to attract customers away from another vendor and decided to combine ice cream and soda water. In the US the A&W restaurant chain is most commonly know for their float beverage line.

Traditionally a root beer float is made with vanilla ice cream but sometimes people will add other flavors (including chocolate, calling it a “brown cow”) to spice things up and sometimes people will even use different types of soda such as orange soda and purple (or grape) soda which would make the float a “purple cow”. Other people will add chocolate syrup, caramel syrup, butterscotch syrup and other sauces as well to change up the flavors. Many people will also use vanilla ice cream, carbonated water, and then choose from a variety of flavored syrups to pick which one they flavor their drinks with. The inventor, Green, had a choice of sixteen different flavors of syrup when he originally invented the ice cream soda. Other people will use just plain soda such as Sprite or 7Up to make what is referred to as a “snow white” drink. You can also make a “sherbet cooler” which is made with a combination of orange or watermelon sherbet, vanilla syrup, and seltzer water. You can also use ginger ale, club soda, milk, sugar, and other ingredients (many people like to add rum or another alcohol) to the float to make them even more interesting. As far as toppings go, whipped cream is a very common topping to see on a float as is a maraschino cherry.

Root beer floats are the most common variety though and they are very simple to make. first you’ll want to take a couple of scoop of vanilla ice cream and scoop them into a tall glass. A tall glass is important here so you can see the fun parts of the drink and so that you’ll have plenty of room for the root beer to go in. The pour the root beer over the top, watching out so that the foam doesn’t spill over. Don’t put the root beer in first because it will usually fall in with a plop and get soda everywhere. However you like your root beer floats (or any ice cream soda for that matter) they are always a fun and refreshing treat so enjoy!