By: Nils Hileson
Root beer was made in the 18th century by Charles Elmer Hires based of a tea that has similar ingredients. Root beer is commonly made with sassafras root, wintergreen, sarsaparilla and other natural ingredients. It also has a lot of sugar and caramel coloring in it commonly. Its name is derived from the root ingredients used to make it and beer was added to the name just to appeal to miners.
For a time root beer was sold as a syrup or powder to be added to sodas before it became a popular soda itself. I myself like root beer quite a bit so I decided to try six different root beers and rank them from worst to best.
Brownie caramel cream root beer: this one is the worst not because it is particularly terrible but because of how disappointing it was. I was expecting actual caramel flavor but it just tasted like watered down root beer. Very disappointing.
Henry Weinhard’s root beer: not very sweet nor did it have much spice. Didn’t have much flavor for a root beer, so it’s ranked low.
Old Red Eye root beer: had a nice amount of spice for a root beer but was lacking in everything else. Was very watery and kinda disappointing.
Root Naturals Apothecary craft soda: a little less sweet than a normal root beer but had good levels of spice. A fine choice for a root beer.
Drive-in style Dog n Suds root beer: had quite a bit of sweetness, and a little less spice than the others I’ve had. I prefer my root beer to be pretty sweet so this root beer was good.
Boylan Bottling Co: definitely the best root beer out of all of them. The spices they used were different from a normal root beer’s but it was a welcome change of taste. They also used cane sugar, which I’m not sure how much that changed the flavor, but I think it made it better. Didn’t taste watered down at all.
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