Jananas

We’ve fallen off the root beer wagon. Our love for all things root beer remains undiminished. Rather, we’ve stopped drinking a tonne of soda pop and have fallen out of the routine. Last weekend we decided to watch a movie, eat popcorn, and drink root beer! On the contender’s list: AJ Stephans vs. Monteray Bay.

First up was AJ Stephans. I would have linked to it, but their website doesn’t appear to be working. This root beer had an awesome minty smell, followed up by a lovely minty and creamy taste. And it uses cane sugar?!? Definitely a win in my books. Jason and I may have had a stare down to see who got to drink the majority of this bottle.

Next up was Monteray Bay. It had a hint of a mint aroma. Sadly this was followed up with what I can only describe as a weird taste – it was very root-y and definitely creamy. It is sweetened with cane sugar and honey. Overall, not my favorite by a long shot, but it wins for using natural sweeteners.

Last night we decided that the perfect way to spend a Monday evening would be with root beer, popcorn, and some riff trax. Thankfully the fridge is normally stocked with several different bottles, so Jason was able to grab two to taste. This time, Dog n Suds vs. Bennett’s Big Bear Root Beer.

Dog n Suds didn’t have much of a scent when we first cracked ‘er open. It was more creamy than minty. And while it was a decent tasting root beer it was nothing special. When you add high fructose corn syrup to the mix, its certainly not something that we’d make an effort to pick up (especially not when there are good cane sugar versions floating around).

Big Bear had a nice minty smell and a good taste, but was lacking in the carbonation department. It too is made with high fructose corn syrup although they tried to mix it up a little by adding molasses. Another thing I didn’t really get was “root beer concentrate” in the ingredients list. As in, you just buy it? Isn’t the point of root beer to brew our own from roots and spices to get a distinct flavor?

The end result of last night’s taste test is that they were both decent tasting root beers, but the use of high fructose corn syrup means that we won’t go out of our way to buy them again.

Since its been a little bit (days and days!) since our last root beer showdown, we decided that we should try out two more bottles over dinner this evening. And yes, we pair root beer and not red/white wine with our dinners. Tonight’s challengers? Kutztown Root Beer vs. Capt’n Eli’s Root Beer.

Kutztown Root Beer had a nice minty aroma when the bottle was first opened up. This proved to be accurate, as this root beer had a nice full minty flavor followed up with just a hint of cream. Its sweetened with cane sugar, which is always a plus in our books. It also has yucca and acacia extracts in addition to the normal super top secret formula of herbs.

Capt’n Eli’s Root Beer had an initial vanilla aroma and followed up with a root-y punch. For a product with the name Capt’n, this was definitely way better than I initially would have expected (and its worth clicking the link and scrolling down – the story is pretty fun too). Its sweetened with cane sugar plus has wintergreen oil, anise, vanilla, spices, and herbs.

The result? I preferred how minty Kutztown was and Jason preferred how traditional Capt’n Eli’s was, but we both liked these two root beers.

We decided to have another root beer taste test this evening. This time it was two diet root beers. For some reason we only had the diet versions of these two so we decided to have test them at the same time.

First up – Saranac Diet Root Beer. This had a nice minty smell and then followed up with a creamy taste. I was a little off put because of the disconnect between smell and taste. There was also a slight aftertaste that put this into the ‘wouldn’t buy this again’ pile. Strangely its sweetened with both high fructose corn syrup and aspartame – the worst of both worlds?

Next up is Gray’s Diet Root Beer. This was pretty terrible – no smell and no taste = coloured water! We both took one sip, looked at each other and dumped the rest out. Yup, officially a don’t buy. In fact, I’d suggest running the other way if someone tries to tell you that this is even remotely passable (i.e. if its on the menu).

Maine Root Beer wasn’t originally on our list of taste testing challengers. A friend of ours recommended it and then shortly thereafter we happened upon it in our local eco/vegan-friendly grocery store and we promptly snagged a bottle. We gave it a test run last night and it ranked pretty high on our list of good root beers.

The root beer was tasty! It was minty and full bodied, although not super creamy. Equally nice was that it wasn’t super sweet. They use pure cane sugar juice as a sweetener – not sugar or high fructose corn syrup or glucose but straight up sugar cane juice. Plus I’m going to be a big fan of any product that only has 5-6 high quality ingredients.

They also seem like a pretty fun bunch of people. I mean free range root beer? That’s a pretty good summary of what we’re doing with our root beer challenge – down with the corporations, up with awesome locally made root beer in brown glass bottles! How can’t I love this!

The only thing that we weren’t huge fans of was that our bottle left us with a slight after taste in our mouths. Nothing terrible, just not super awesome.