volume vs weight

Ok so I'm a big Alton Brown fan and therefore put more weight in weight over volume of ingredients. This also helps with planning since most products have weight labels on them.

Long story short, if I buy a 16 oz bag of sarsparilla root from somewhere and a recipe calls for 1 cup of the stuff, how many times can I make that recipe before I need to reorder?

the ingredients I am most interested in are sarsparilla root, sassafras root bark, burdock root, and any other types commonly used to produce root beer.

Thanks

Only way to be sure is to have a scale on hand so you can weigh a cup of it and know for sure, or measure out the volume of the entire 16 oz bag and calculate from there. Otherwise it's all guess work.

Weight is the key but to give you an idea:

Some root beer recipes will take 1/4 cup sassafras for 1 gallon. I just made 4 gallons of a dandelion/burdock beer where 1 cup of each yielded about 3 oz. these were cut, sifted, and dried. I believe it will be similar for other roots.

Dandelion burdock beer? Sounds interesting. I may have to try some.

I'll let you know how it turns out. Burdock is a strange flavor. I didn't expect it when simmering but we'll see. It's been a British staple for at least a century or two.

So I just tried the recipe I custom made for the burdock/dandelion soda . . . .not bad but it needs some tweaking. I would say that the die hard purist would rather prefer this recipe but for the first time drinker a Fentiman's style that masks the flavor of the burdock and dandelion would fare better. It's very interesting. I may have to crush the star anise next time and lessen the amount of roots a tad. Idk.

Hmmm. I'll have to see if I can find some Fentiman's anywhere and see what I think. Thanks for the info.