I remember as a kid one of most favorite treats was a trip to the A&W Drive-in. Dad would come home at the end of a hot summer day and after playing baseball all day, I’d be starving. Dad would announce that we were going to the A&W and we’d all pile into the station wagon and ramble to the other end of town to root beer and hamburger heaven. I would get a big ol’ hamburger with fries and an icy perfect frosty mug of A&W root beer, lean back in the back seat eating away and all would be well with the world.
Unfortunately, A&W Drive-ins don’t exist anymore, at least not where I live. We do have an A&W fast food place but it isn’t the same. But, at least, A&W still exist and that’s the main thing. I’ll always remember the A&W Drive-in as the beginning of my love affair with root beer.
Ever since Charles Hires developed his concoction of a non-alcoholic carbonated root beer, nothing has ever tasted better. Whereas most carbonated drinks are better with ice, root beer definitely is not. It’s best served icy cold in an icy mug. The only allowable substance that can be mixed with root beer is vanilla ice cream thus creating the Root Beer Float – the Float of Floats. It just doesn’t get any better.
Of course, there is root beer, and then there is root beer. The following is the Rice Rating of Root Beer:
Superior:
Stewarts (2006 Winner of the Root Beer World Cup)
A&W (mild, little sweet)
Hires
Good:
IBC
Frosty (used to be the best)
Bad: (all too fizzy)
Mugs
Barqs
Dads
Worst:
Shasta (root-beer flavored Alka-Seltzer
I know there are other brands out there, but these are all that are available to me. What do y’all think? Agree? Disagree?
Years ago, Dads Root Beer had a different recipe and was tops, along with A&W (from the drive in only).
The only switches I’d do, is move IBC to the Superior and A&W down to Good.
Ah, a subject close to my heart. I consider myself a connoisseur of *cheap* root beer, so I ignore the IBC’s, Stewarts, etc.
Hands down winner in my book is the product sold by Kroger, called BigK. I prefer it’s sweet, light taste and medium carbonation over the Dads, Frosty, and Shasta offerings.
The cool thing about root beer is the variety of flavorings one encounters when sampling the variety of brands. Conversely, I find some individual brands vary in taste from batch to batch — ie, the Sam’s Choice you find in Walmart and Sam’s Club.
The A&W franchises still mix batches daily in most of their outlets, so the taste of that fresh product is really in a field of its own (I *like* it!).
So, on the redneck scale of TBE/$ — that’s taste bud excitablity per dollar expended — here’s my ranking for the stuff that’s available for less than 99 cents/2 liter bottle:
YEA, BUDDY
BigK
OK, BUT NOT MY FIRST CHOICE
Frosty
Dads
Mug
A&W
I’M TOO CHEAP
IBC
Stewarts
TOO VARIABLE, TOO FIZZY, ETC.
Sam’s Choice
Shasta
Tubz (that’s the Bubba-Cola root beer)
WHEN I NEED A SHOT OF CAFFEINE
Barq’s