As promised in a previous post, my friends and I decided to do a blind tasting of different brands of Root Beer. We all had our own ideas and hopes of what we thought would be top contender. There were surprised faces, shocked tongues, and confused brains through the whole process. A few things changed as well, from the original concept of taking a bunch of Root Beer and chugging to a more sophisticated operation.
Starting from our original list of ten beers, we found extras as well as couldn’t find a few from the first list in any store. Our final list looked was Mug, A&W, Vess, Americana, Barq’s, Presidents Choice, Real Brew, Dad’s, Intergalactic Root Beer, Boylan’s, Stewart’s and Jones Soda. A list of twelve now, minus Jarritos from our first list. It seemed like a daunting task, having to drink all this Root Beer and rate it. We chose to go with a collective point system to mark each drink. Originally a guest list of 6, Robert came down with a flu and couldn’t attend. So with 5 of us in attendance for the tasting (Me, Brad, Jonathan, Tim, and Brendan) and my wife pouring drinks while we waited in another room, we began what we thought would be a long process. Each Beer would be rated out of 10, so the highest points a drink could get would be 50. Not that any of these Root Beers managed such a high number. After only an hour of tasting in groups of 3 beers at a time, we managed to find out which pop lived up to the title of Best Damn Root Beer. Disclaimer just cause some of these appear in a “Best Root Beer” list Does Not mean that they are good pop…like, at all. I like Root Beer, but some of these were an abomination in pop form.
12. Real Brew: 3 Points
This stuff was nasty. I don’t know how it got past sensors to be a Root Beer, but it was offensive. To be fair, I also am completely unsure how the next pop got a higher mark, as we all agreed it was awful. All of us except Tim rated this to be a perfect 0 out of 10. Man we hated this stuff.
11. Intergalactic Root Beer: 5 Points
Intergalactic Root Beer does not care about people. Most Root Beers are a deep brown colour, have a hint of sarsaparilla/oak/caramel flavour and a nice fizz to them. intergalactic said “fuck that, let’s make ours somewhat orange, taste like pumpkin vomit and whale tears!” They added things like cloves, anise seed, cinnamon and what ever the fuck “oil of wintergreen” is. They were literally going to be just a pie making company, and the day when the crusts were set to arrive they instead got an order of 1950’s style glass bottles. They did what anyone in that situation would do and just put their shitty pie through a blender and stuffed it in the bottles. They just labeled it wrong. Its not Root Beer, It’s hell. I wouldn’t recommend this stuff if you were pregnant or hoping to be, as it will ruin your life worst than meth. A combined 1 point from each judge saw this travesty of a soft drink get a higher mark than Real Brew.
10. Dad’s Root Beer: 12 Points
This one came as a complete shock to all of us. I think we all have found memories of drinking Dad’s on a hot day, probably while eating something equally not good for you and playing games. When we first tried this for the blind tasting, it was in a cup simply labeled “H”. The group and I were all doing our best impressions of a wine connoisseur and smelling each drink. This one I think is when I stopped doing that. It smelt like dust. Honest to goodness dust. Like going into an old attic, finding the treasure trunk buried under old clothes, opening it up and TAKING IN THE BIGGEST INHALE OF 1000 YEAR OLD DEAD SKIN AND TERMITES. Dust. The taste after that was pretty bad too. This hit me hard, cause I loved Dad’s…or at least I thought I did…fucking dust. most of us hated it, giving it just a 1 out of 10. Of course Brad and Tim had to be weird about it, rating it a 4 & 5, respectfully.
9. Presidents Choice: 15 Points
Kind of the bland taste you would expect from a no name brand. It wasn’t the worst, but It also wasn’t any good. Having most of us rate is either a two or a 3 out loud as we tried it, Brendan took a sip and said “That’s not bad!” We all looked at him with disappointment in our eyes. He rated it a 5.
8 & 7. Barq’s/Boylan’s: 18 Points Each
Dead even in voting, we almost thought that these were the same brand for a second. Going into the day I figured that Barq’s would be pretty low on the list, as I have never really cared for it…but I somehow gave it a 6 in voting. The world is pretty upside down for me at this point.
6. Vess: 25 Points
We all joked about this one all day. We had never heard of the brand before. The story of how Brad even found it was not promising. In a convenience store on the way to Edmonton, he finds this random Root Beer for like 25 cents a can. We laugh, and say like “watch, it will be the best one here!” Think about it though, this costs about 1/8th of the other brands and is in the middle of this list. It was actually decent.
5. Americana: 26 Points
Narrowly beating out Vess was the brand Americana. I like this brand, found it in a fancy sandwich place in West Edmonton Mall. The Group all didn’t mind it either. It’s a nice sweet, vanilla flavour with real cane sugar.
4. A & W: 29 Points
Generally thought of as the king of Root Beers, this was a bit of a surprise to come in this low on the list. We all enjoyed it though still, and it’s probably still the best Root Beer to make a float with.
3. Mug: 33 Points
We are getting to the good stuff here. Much to Tim’s delight, Mug is rated highly on this list. It had the right amount of fizz, vanilla and caramel flavour. Had a high rating from the crowd, and I ate my words as Tim did say that Mug was better than Dad’s or Barq’s.
Now on to the final two. This is were things get interesting. Call me M. Night Shyamalan, because I’m about to drop a twist ending. See, when we were putting this all together we decided that each of us taste tester would have to bring 1-3 different brands to help out. I picked up a couple, Tim got Boylans and found a few that weren’t on the list and so on. Robert, the guy that was sick, was going to pick up the Jones Soda and Stewart’s. With Robert not attending though, we no longer had those two brands of Root Beer. The 5 of us guys weren’t able to piece that together though, and thought we still had those brands with us…somehow. We aren’t the smartest bunch I guess. Anyways, the ladies pouring our drinks figured that out right away, but wanted us to keep guessing. So they said nothing, until the final reveal after we tried all pops. Just so we couldn’t catch on, they even made us drink 2 brands twice, A&W and Mug. We still managed to rate them about the same each time, but had no clue we just drank the same pop twice.
2. Mug: 35 Points
Our first taste of Mug was early on in the challenge. Just the second drink, in actually. The second time it came around was the very last drink, and our blind taste buds didn’t change much in the votes, which I suppose make sense. This whole thing couldn’t have been different if we had the Jones and Stewart’s. Who knows where those would have ended up on this list. One thing is certain though, I hate Dad’s now….and, I guess Mug is good. Not quite as good as the best, but still pretty good.
1. A&W: 39 Points
What can we say about A&W. They have been making Root Beer since 1919, so I suppose they have had some time to get it right. It came out on top, I wasn’t really expecting it to be the best. But there it is, the best Root Beer around is the one that is the oldest (without smelling like it is…fucking dust).
This whole thing was a trip. Honestly turned out to be a lot of fun. After testing out all the Beers separately, we had this weird idea of trying to mix them all together…big mistake. It had the smell from Dad’s (fucking dust) and the flavour from Intergalactic (pumpkin vomit). Aside from the mix of all the pop, I would do this again but just with a different type of pop. Maybe Cream soda next time? Hope you enjoyed reading it, let me know in the comments what brand you prefer, and if any of this made you change your mind!