Tower Root Beer (rooted in Somerville, MA -ouch just reread that...) has been reintroduced after a 30year break. Further reading.The recipe is based one their 1900s recipe; cane sugar not HFCS (wouldn't be historically accurate anyway), no vanilla but a tiny touch of anisette added. Really like their thinking.
Fantastic, article about the relaunch and nostalgia of Tower at EdibleCommunities, snippet below;
In 1920, Tower Root Beer added another signature element. A tip from a friend led Domenick to an abandoned South End warehouse full of amber beer bottles, a casualty of Prohibition. Run-of-the-mill clear bottles became history.Time from Johnny Foodmaster to float was about 4 minutes... Great stuff.
Displaced by the McGrath & O'Brien Highway project, bottling operations moved to an abandoned church on Tufts Street in Somerville. However, by 1938 the company had outgrown that space. The former location of beer-bottling company Jake E. Wirth, at 52 Roland Street in Charlestown, became available, and this served as the home of the business until 1969.
"The building next door was Hood Ice Cream and the workers used to trade ice-cream sandwiches for cases of root beer over the wall, all summer long"...
