VOA慢速英语2011--How Root Beer Changed the Business World

THIS IS AMERICA - How Root Beer Changed the Business World

BARBARA KLEIN: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Barbara Klein.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I'm Christopher Cruise. This week on our program, we look at the history of root beer. Most Americans know it only as a soft drink enjoyed by generations of children and adults. Yet root beer played a part in shaping the modern food and beverage¹ industry. It even launched the Marriott hotels around the world.
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BARBARA KLEIN: Root beer is a sweet drink similar to birch beer but popular mostly in North America. Different versions can be made from at least thirty choices of ingredients. These include sassafras, vanilla², wintergreen, cherry-tree bark, licorice root, black cherry and cane³ sugar. Brewers who make root beer can also use flavorings like nutmeg, molasses, cinnamon, clove⁵ and honey. Some versions contain caffeine.
A cool treat especially on a hot summer day is a root beer float, sometimes called a "black cow" or "brown cow." You simply fill a glass with root beer and float vanilla ice cream on the thick foam⁶ on top. Some people have their own recipes for root beer floats which you can watch them making on YouTube.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: But some root beers taste like bubble gum or medicine. This helps explain why not everyone likes root beer. There was even a scene about that in the movie "Big Fan."
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But root beer is considered a classic American drink. This is thanks in large part to one man. Charles Hires was a pharmacist in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. At least four conflicting stories are told about how he came to find or create his recipe for root beer in the eighteen seventies.
Hires called it "The Great Health Drink." He sold it in his drug store under the name "Hires Root Tea."
BARBARA KLEIN: At some point, Charles Hires renamed it root beer, perhaps to appeal more to beer-drinking men. Early versions were a combination of bitter and sweet. He experimented. He used flavorings from trees and plants like sassafras and sarsaparilla, wintergreen, birch bark, herbs and juniper berries. He mixed them and boiled them until he had what he considered the perfect combination.
By eighteen seventy-six he was ready to present Hires Root Beer at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. That event celebrated⁷ America's one hundredth birthday. The Philadelphia exhibition also included Alexander Graham Bell's telephone, Heinz ketchup⁸ and the Remington typewriter.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Charles Hires did not invent root beer. The Library of Congress has cookbooks that contain recipes from ten or twenty years before he began to sell his version. But Hires gets credit as the first person to produce and market root beer throughout the country.
He sold his health drink cold. People could buy it in bottles, but some people liked to make their own root beer. So he also sold root beer kits⁹.
Hires sold a powder mix and a liquid extract. He sold the extract to local brewers around the country. They added water and prepared the root beer. Today this idea of selling syrup¹⁰ to locally owned bottlers can be found throughout the soft drink industry.
Charles Hires also believed strongly in the power of advertising¹¹. He advertised his root beer in newspapers and on trading cards.
Hires wrote about how he became successful in an article published in nineteen thirteen in the American Druggist and Pharmaceutical¹² Record. You can find a link to that article at voaspecialenglish.com.
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BARBARA KLEIN: Over the years, America's taste for carbonated soft drinks changed. Colas, like Coke and Pepsi, became much more popular than root beer. Hires is now owned by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group which also sells other brands of root beer. Another brand of root beer with a long history, Barq's, is now owned by the Coca-Cola Company.
But root beer has been at the root of some big developments over the years.
In nineteen twenty-seven, a newly married couple moved from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Washington. They opened a root beer restaurant. It was small, just nine seats. Soon the couple renamed it the Hot Shoppe. We have a picture of it on our website.
The Marriott hotel chain began as a root beer restaurant in Washington
The couple were John Willard Marriott and his wife, Alice, That little restaurant in the nation's capital grew into the worldwide chain of Marriott hotels.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Before it was renamed the Hot Shoppe, it was an A&W restaurant. A&W is a well-known brand of root beer and a restaurant chain.
Roy Allen was the A and Frank Wright was the W in A&W. They helped create the idea of franchising¹³. In the early nineteen twenties they began selling franchise¹⁴ licenses¹⁵ to local restaurant owners to use the A&W name and sell its products.
A&W also helped create the fast-food industry. By nineteen sixty there were over two thousand franchised¹⁶ A&W restaurants nationwide. They were bigger than McDonald's, but McDonald's soon became much bigger.
BARBARA KLEIN: Root beer is also part of the history of the Sonic chain of drive-in restaurants. The company began as a hamburger and root beer stand in Shawnee, Oklahoma, in nineteen fifty-three.
Today it has more than three thousand five hundred restaurants across the United States. Almost a thousand of them are in Texas. And, yes, Sonic still serves root beer.
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CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: There are hundreds of different brands of root beer -- and at least five English-language websites that review them. One is rootbeerbrothers.com. The five men who operate the site are not related, except by a love of root beer.
One of the Root Beer Brothers is Adam. We asked him his last name and he said "Root Beer." So, Adam Rootbeer, where do you find the root beers you review?
ADAM: "No matter where you go, you're going to find a root beer, and especially for us, wherever we go we look for root beer, and we're always amazed. I mean, just yesterday I unintentionally discovered another root beer that we had never heard of. And it's just so awesome¹⁷ because it's just like finding a treasure every time. Like, what's this one gonna be like, and what's the history behind this root beer? And so there it is, I mean, there's just this huge world of root beer."
Adam says he drinks root beer at breakfast and throughout the day. Like many people, he remembers it from his childhood.
ADAM: "Some of my earliest memories are with root beer. My grandfather -- it wasn't uncommon¹⁸ for him and I to sit back and enjoy an A&W root beer or a Barq's root beer."
BARBARA KLEIN: David Fankhauser is not one of the Root Beer Brothers. He is a professor of biology and chemistry at the University of Cincinnati's Clermont College. He has a webpage where since nineteen ninety-six he has explained a way to make root beer at home.
DAVID FANKHAUSER: "I have some decades of experience with making homemade root beer. Root beer can be made with the materials that are readily available in America. It's a homebrew American product."
Professor Fankhauser requires his biology students to make root beer at home. However, he does not grade them on the quality of how it tastes.
DAVID FANKHAUSER: "It's so simple. With a two-liter bottle you add sugar, you add extract, you add a small amount of yeast¹⁹ and water, cap it up and in two days they've got root beer. And if they do that I give ‘em full credit."
You can find a link to his website at voaspecialenglish.com.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Professor Fankhauser has his own childhood memories of eating at A&W restaurants.
DAVID FANKHAUSER: "And I remember as a child, it was a drive-in. You would go in and a waitress would come to your car and take your order and she would bring out a frosted, heavy-glass mug which would be filled with root beer."
(MUSIC)
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Many local breweries²⁰ around the United States that make their own brands of beer also make root beer and other non-alcoholic drinks.
The Fordham and Old Dominion²¹ Brewing²² Company in Dover, Delaware, is partly owned by the international company InBev.
The brewers at Fordham and Old Dominion make many different beers. But their single best-selling product -- over twenty percent of production -- is root beer. Walter Trifari, the head brewer⁴, says the style is based on an old recipe found in the Library of Congress.
Walter Trifari, Master Brewer at Old Dominion Brewing Company
WALTER TRIFARI: "There's something about the sweetness, the texture²³. I really attribute it a lot to the honey. Honey's the magical ingredient. It has a lot of magical components²⁴ to it. You know, it's very healthy for you. It can do a lot of good things. But I think when you infuse it into a liquid, you may not taste it right off the bat and say 'Wow, there's honey in here.' But the honey is definitely giving you some textures²⁵ on your tongue and the mouth-feel that I enjoy."
Walter Trifari says the root beer brings back memories for a lot of people who take tours of the brewery²⁶.
WALTER TRIFARI: "I think root beer does have a lot of history. And it sometimes takes people -- at least I've seen it here at the bar when they've tried it, or when I mention 'Oh we make root beer,' some of the baby boomers or, or that age group, you know, a little twinkle in their eye of like 'Oh I remember when I used to get root beer.' I think it brings people back a little bit to their childhood."
BARBARA KLEIN: You can learn more about root beer at voaspecialenglish.com, the website for VOA's daily news and information service for people learning English.
I'm Barbara Klein with Christopher Cruise, who wrote today's program. Brianna Blake was our producer.
CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: We leave you with Billy Joel playing his "Root Beer Rag." Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

1 beverage   

n.(水，酒等之外的)饮料

参考例句：

• The beverage is often colored with caramel.这种饮料常用焦糖染色。
• Beer is a beverage of the remotest time.啤酒是一种最古老的饮料。

2 vanilla   

n.香子兰，香草

参考例句：

• He used to love milk flavoured with vanilla.他过去常爱喝带香草味的牛奶。
• I added a dollop of vanilla ice-cream to the pie.我在馅饼里加了一块香草冰激凌。

3 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

4 brewer   

n. 啤酒制造者

参考例句：

• Brewer is a very interesting man. 布鲁尔是一个很有趣的人。
• I decided to quit my job to become a brewer. 我决定辞职，做一名酿酒人。

5 clove   

n.丁香味

参考例句：

• If tired,smell a whiff of clove oil and it will wake you up.如果疲倦，闻上一点丁香油将令人清醒。
• A sweet-smell comes from roses and clove trees.丁香与玫瑰的香味扑鼻而来。

6 foam   

v./n.泡沫，起泡沫

参考例句：

• The glass of beer was mostly foam.这杯啤酒大部分是泡沫。
• The surface of the water is full of foam.水面都是泡沫。

7 celebrated   

adj.有名的，声誉卓著的

参考例句：

• He was soon one of the most celebrated young painters in England.不久他就成了英格兰最负盛名的年轻画家之一。
• The celebrated violinist was mobbed by the audience.观众团团围住了这位著名的小提琴演奏家。

8 ketchup   

n.蕃茄酱，蕃茄沙司

参考例句：

• There's a spot of ketchup on the tablecloth.桌布上有一点番茄酱的渍斑。
• Could I have some ketchup and napkins,please?请给我一些番茄酱和纸手巾？

9 kits   

衣物和装备( kit的名词复数 )； 成套用品； 配套元件

参考例句：

• Keep your kits closed and locked when not in use. 不用的话把你的装备都锁好放好。
• Gifts Articles, Toy and Games, Wooden Toys, Puzzles, Craft Kits. 采购产品礼品，玩具和游戏，木制的玩具，智力玩具，手艺装备。

10 syrup   

n.糖浆，糖水

参考例句：

• I skimmed the foam from the boiling syrup.我撇去了煮沸糖浆上的泡沫。
• Tinned fruit usually has a lot of syrup with it.罐头水果通常都有许多糖浆。

11 advertising   

n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的

参考例句：

• Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
• The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。

12 pharmaceutical   

adj.药学的，药物的；药用的，药剂师的

参考例句：

• She has donated money to establish a pharmaceutical laboratory.她捐款成立了一个药剂实验室。
• We are engaged in a legal tussle with a large pharmaceutical company.我们正同一家大制药公司闹法律纠纷。

13 franchising   

v.给…以特许权，出售特许权( franchise的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Franchising has costs as well as benefits for the economy. 对整个经济来说特许经销有利也有弊。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• Franchising, a practice adaptable to small business, has increased greatly in recent years. 近年来适用于小企业的特许经销发展得很快。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件

14 franchise   

n.特许，特权，专营权，特许权

参考例句：

• Catering in the schools is run on a franchise basis.学校餐饮服务以特许权经营。
• The United States granted the franchise to women in 1920.美国于1920年给妇女以参政权。

15 licenses   

n.执照( license的名词复数 )v.批准，许可，颁发执照( license的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• Drivers have ten days' grace to renew their licenses. 驾驶员更换执照有10天的宽限期。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Jewish firms couldn't get import or export licenses or raw materials. 犹太人的企业得不到进出口许可证或原料。 来自辞典例句

16 franchised   

v.给…以特许权，出售特许权( franchise的过去式和过去分词 )

参考例句：

• He is starting the first school himself,but subsequent ones will be franchised to use the Fujita method. 他已经自己开办了第一所学校，但是以后的学校将被特许使用富士达方法。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Driving tests for franchised bus are held on request by bus companies. 专营巴士的驾驶考试只在巴士公司要求下才举行。 来自互联网

17 awesome   

adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的

参考例句：

• The church in Ireland has always exercised an awesome power.爱尔兰的教堂一直掌握着令人敬畏的权力。
• That new white convertible is totally awesome.那辆新的白色折篷汽车简直棒极了.

18 uncommon   

adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的

参考例句：

• Such attitudes were not at all uncommon thirty years ago.这些看法在30年前很常见。
• Phil has uncommon intelligence.菲尔智力超群。

19 yeast   

n.酵母；酵母片；泡沫；v.发酵；起泡沫

参考例句：

• Yeast can be used in making beer and bread.酵母可用于酿啤酒和发面包。
• The yeast began to work.酵母开始发酵。

20 breweries   

酿造厂，啤酒厂( brewery的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• In some cases, this is desirable, but most breweries prefer lighter-type beers. 在一些情况下，这是很理想的，但是大多数啤酒厂更倾向于生产酒度较低的啤酒。
• Currently, there are 58 breweries producing Snow Beeracross the country. 目前，全国共有58个雪花啤酒厂。

21 dominion   

n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图

参考例句：

• Alexander held dominion over a vast area.亚历山大曾统治过辽阔的地域。
• In the affluent society,the authorities are hardly forced to justify their dominion.在富裕社会里，当局几乎无需证明其统治之合理。

22 brewing   

n. 酿造, 一次酿造的量 动词brew的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• It was obvious that a big storm was brewing up. 很显然，一场暴风雨正在酝酿中。
• She set about brewing some herb tea. 她动手泡一些药茶。

23 texture   

n.(织物)质地；(材料)构造；结构；肌理

参考例句：

• We could feel the smooth texture of silk.我们能感觉出丝绸的光滑质地。
• Her skin has a fine texture.她的皮肤细腻。

24 components   

（机器、设备等的）构成要素，零件，成分； 成分( component的名词复数 )； [物理化学]组分； [数学]分量； （混合物的）组成部分

参考例句：

• the components of a machine 机器部件
• Our chemistry teacher often reduces a compound to its components in lab. 在实验室中化学老师常把化合物分解为各种成分。

25 textures   

n.手感( texture的名词复数 )；质感；口感；（音乐或文学的）谐和统一感

参考例句：

• I'm crazy about fabrics textures and colors and designs. 我喜欢各式各样的纺织物--对它的质地，色彩到花纹图案--简直是入了迷。 来自辞典例句
• Let me clear up the point about the textures. 让我明确了一点有关的纹理。 来自互联网

26 brewery   

n.啤酒厂

参考例句：

• The brewery had 25 heavy horses delivering beer in London.啤酒厂有25匹高头大马在伦敦城中运送啤酒。
• When business was good,the brewery employed 20 people.在生意好的时候，这家酿造厂曾经雇佣过20人。