Jananas

We spent today playing with fibre (me) and computers (Jason) and decided that our hard work should be rewarded with some more root beer. Sprecher Root Beer is a micro-brewery founded in 1985 and located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’m not sure when they ventured into the realm of sodas, but they do have a full line of gourmet sodas. Our friend had grabbed two bottles of Sprechers for us – one Root Beer Soda and one Lo-Cal Root Beer (sorry for the not great shot, my camera didn’t feel like cooperating).

Before we had even opened this bottles, they’d already stolen a little piece of my heart. They are big and sturdy and feel good in your hand. In fact, they are so big that they contain an entire pint! Even better, the labels say that they are “non-alcoholic”. That just made me laugh in the ‘really, who made that mistake?’ sort of way.

We opened our bottles up and they both had that amazing minty root beer aroma. The normal version is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (gross!), but also has raw Wisconsin honey. Not entirely sure about how those two fit together, but… this root beer was good. It was full bodied (more on the minty side) without being overwhelmingly sweet. It had a subtle mint aftertaste without being overbearing.

The lo-cal version was good. It was tasty without being sweet. It had high fructose corn syrup, raw honey, and sodium saccharin as sweeteners. Thankfully there wasn’t that gross artificial sweetener taste or aftertaste. In fact, this diet root beer soda was so good that even Jason gave it two thumbs up – a first so far in our challenge!

We both liked this root beer. And although it isn’t our top choice overall, if you’re going to pick one sweetened with high fructose corn syrup I’d make it a Sprecher’s.

In fact, we enjoyed this root beer so much that we finished our taste testing off with root beer floats. Glad to say that this root beer passes that test as well!

In our quest for good root beer, I started googling home made root beer in Toronto. Turns out that two of our local breweries make their own! First up was the Granite Brewery at Mount Pleasant and Eglinton. Reason it was contender #1? Its on the way home from my parent’s place. Yup, I’m all about efficiency.

We stopped by mid-afternoon to try some out. Ordered two root beers and some food so that we didn’t look like total weirdos.

Here’s Jason drinking his fancy glass mug of root beer. We asked if they sell it so that we could take some home and the answer‘s no. Apparently this is so home brew that it doesn’t last well when bottled (which is actually fairly common). Home brewed root beer is a class all on its own and doesn’t necessarily compare well to mass produced (even if its fancy bottled) root beer. Thankfully we had tried some before at Iron Hill Brewery in Delaware so we were better prepared to enjoy this one.

The root beer itself was well rounded and scrumptious. Ever eaten something that tasted so good that you didn’t want to eat/drink anything else afterward because it would ruin the taste? Yup, this root beer was that good. It was well rounded, managing to be creamy and smooth and slightly minty all at the same time (i.e. not flavours kicked in as an after taste). It wasn’t super carbonated (when compared to bottled root beer), but it had a nice creamy head to it. Overall, this was a big win. It was so good that I purposefully drank it slowly so that I could savor it, which is impressive because usually I’m a gulper.

And yes, this was so good that we might stop by again. Just for a root beer.

Today’s a gray Canadian winter day. So we wandered over to Black Dog Video and grabbed some movies. Because we’re all about root beer these days, we immediately snapped up two bottles of Boylan’s Root Beer. We’ve both had it before and adore it, so we thought that we’d add it into the mix.

They are a pretty amazing company. In fact, their grape soda is my favorite one thus far. From their website:

“The Boylan Bttlg. Co., founded in 1891, is honored to share very similar beginnings with the carbonated beverages of the same era that are now world-famous. But it is our differences of today of which we are most proud. For more than a century Boylan has formulated and produced, regardless of cost, only “authentic soda-pop”, unlike most bottlers in the country who have over the years compromised their original recipes and cut costs by switching to corn syrup and plastic bottles. Boylan still uses pure cane sugar which enhances the true flavor rather than leave a syrupy aftertaste and thick glass bottles to ensure freshness and proper levels of carbonation. Our in-house flavor formulations use the most expensive extracts and essences – and plenty of them. So whether you’re drinking a Boylan because you appreciate what is good and made right or just trying one for the first time, we thank you for supporting one of the oldest bottling companies and its authentic beverages of a bygone era.”

Now onto the Root Beer Review. First, Boylan only uses cane sugar – nothing artificial here. The soda itself is tasty and pleasing to drink. It has a creamy but not too sweet taste when you first take a sip. There’s a lovely and gentle mint aftertaste. It has the best of a root beer – sweet, creamy, and minty.

To put my review into context – I’ve restaurants to eat at specifically because they sell Boylan products. They are that good.

Last night we had another contender showdown – Berghoff vs. diet Berghoff. Originally hailing from Chicago’s own Berghoff restaurant, you can find more about its history here or below.

“A descendant of Prohibition-era Bergo Soda Pop, Berghoff Root Beer has long been a favorite. For the past 50 years this exceptional rich-tasting root beer could only be enjoyed on draft at the restaurant. Now, both regular and diet varieties are being bottled and can be purchased at The Berghoff or in retail stores.”

Our last few attempts have been a little disappointing, but we’re very happy to announce that we were delighted with Berghoff. To start, their regular root beer is sweetened with cane sugar (not corn syrup). Both bottles had a wonderful minty and creamy scent. It sounds silly, but have you ever smelled a bottle of soda right after its been opened? Try it, if its a good bottle the funny looks you’ll get from the people around you are totally worth the aroma heaven you’ll be in.

The regular version was fresh tasting and well rounded. It was minty and smooth and creamy. It had a little bit of everything and balanced it well. In terms of personal preference, I found it to be quiet sweet (in the cane sugar way) whereas Jason loved it for precisely that reason.

On the other hand I quite liked the diet version. [ I'm going to go off an a brief tangent - I love (love) diet coke, and always have. Its funny because I'm already with the taste of aspartame in it, even though I loathe it in other sodas. I also intensely dislike sucralose, mostly because I find it has a terrible aftertaste. ] The diet version is sweetened with aspartame. It wasn’t nearly as sweet tasting as the regular version. And although it has that aspartame taste, it wasn’t terrible (or as terrible as) most other diet soda. For example, I think diet Dr. Pepper is awful. Overall this diet root beer was quite pleasant. It still had a nice root beer flavour and it wasn’t ruined or overwhelmed by the choice of the artificial sweetener.

I would definitely buy this again and recommend that you give it a try. Thank you Berghoff for restoring my faith in our root beer challenge!

Another night of the root beer challenge and another paired challenge – the diet and regular versions of Frostie Root Beer. For both bottles, they had that nice root beer smell. Ever smelt a bottle of root beer right after its been opened? Well, if you haven’t I suggest that you do – its one of those little joys in life (like jumping in puddles or smelling roses). Unfortunately the overall taste was, well, average. Somehow I expect more from a small distributor and from a beverage in a glass bottle.

However, our Frostie had been sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and wiki rumor mills have it that the latest bottling run has returned back to the original cane sugar, meaning that it might taste a whole lot better. The diet version was sweetened with sucralose (aka splenda). I’m not a big fan. I find that it tastes fine while you are drinking it, but there’s a chemical aftertaste that ruins the good root beer taste.

Anyone know why Frostie bottles have pictures of Santa on the label? I get the frostie/frosty connection (i.e. a cold glass mug) and so could understand if they had used a snowman. But Santa? I just don’t quite understand.