It's time to brew up a spring tonic. Whether or not you believe in the need to thin out sluggish blood at the end of winter, spring's a great time to drink Pappy's Sassafras Tea.

        The liquid concentrate with the aromatic, fragrant, root beer aroma makes good hot or iced tea, especially when sweetened a touch with sugar or honey.

        You can buy Pappy's at many groceries — Bigg's and Kroger both stock it.

        Jeff Nordhaus, the third generation of his family to head H&K Products in Columbus Grove, Ohio, claims the company is the only brewer of sassafras liquid tea in the world.

        His company brews it from sassafras root bark that is gathered in the Ozark and Appalachian mountains by independent diggers. They dig the roots without hurting the trees, Mr. Nordhaus says, often digging down to a root, stripping the bark, then recovering it so the bark grows back.

        In the 1970s, it looked like H&K would go out of business when the FDA declared that safrole, a natural oil in the bark, was carcinogenic. Mr. Nordhaus' grandfather, Herman Kerner, devised a way to remove the safrole without changing the tea's taste — or its health effects. Sassafras was used medicinally by American Indians, who passed it along to white settlers.

        For more information, and recipes using Pappy's, check out www.sassafrastea.com.

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