Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Mug Root Beer



Root Beer is pretty strange to most European palates, but being a kid who liked to swallow toothpaste, I really love this stuff. That description might be a little extreme, but every time I drink root beer it feels like I am finally allowed to swallow that toothpaste,  and I enjoy every drop! Throwback-adolescent-wish-fulfillment works for me, nostalgic indulgence if you will.

But to be honest, it's a lot better than toothpaste, it just shares some of the flavor with that old red-colored Sensodyne toothpaste. How else to describe the flavor? Hmm, perhaps butterscotch mixed with cloves and a lot of sugar. This particular brand is really good, one of the better ones I've tried. I think the only Root Beer I would recommend ahead of this one is A & W. Most good Root Beer is caffeine free, you may feel ripped off by that but caffeine was never a traditional ingredient in the stuff. Root Beer has been brewed here in North America for well over a hundred years, it's traditionally made with the root or bark of the Sassafras tree and sometimes comes with very low alcohol content but all of the brands available in stores here are non-alcoholic. It's rare to find Root Beer outside of North America although it is sometimes available in places like Ireland and the UK, but only as a novelty item, it's not sold on a broad scale.

So yeah, don't let my description put you off. If you're from outside North America and you like to import sodas or buy them on e-bay (you'd be surprised what you can find and how cheap it can be), give some Root Beer a try, it's very different to other soft drinks and a truly authentic North American flavor.

2 comments:

  1. Also try Barq's brand, and if you can find it Barq's Birch Beer. As a kid, it was a big deal to plop a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a glass of root beer. I think it's gross now even though I dearly love vanilla bean ice cream and root beer. Just not together. I prefer Mug over A&W. Mug is more "root-y", while A&W is more "vanilla-y"

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  2. I really wanan try a Root Beer float! I'm thinking butterscotch or vanilla icecream. Birch beer sounds interesting. I need to find some.

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