A&W Is Good Enough

My grandfather was over tonight and we got to talking about homebrewing (he does a little, but he makes more wine than beer -- he has fruit trees in his yard) and it turns out that not only can you home brew beer, but you can make your own root beer. I thought I'd give that a shot, but after reading about it a bit, I'm a little concerned about safrole poisoning and the possibility of having a fermenting bottle of root beer blow my head off.