Thread: root beer

What is Root Beer and how would you describe the taste? I've never had the pleasure, and I've never seen it for sale, but my curiosity is piqued!

Originally Posted by majurey

What is Root Beer and how would you describe the taste? I've never had the pleasure, and I've never seen it for sale, but my curiosity is piqued!

!!!

It is traditionally made with sassafrass roots and sometimes a bit of anice. Sort of like licorice but much sweeter.

I'm not too keen on liqorice, fennel, anise, pernod, ouzo, that sort of taste. But I'm still going to hunt some out and try it. Thanks!

Look around for an America Today store in London somewhere. They have it in stock. Also some of the fancier english supermarketchains have it in store sometimes.

Love root beer, Dad's is my favorite next to the one batch my mother made when I was just a wee one, that was truely heavenly.

Most rootbeer's today are flavored with wintergreen. Some taste stronger of wintergreen than others. Dad's rootbeer is a good example of a rootbeer with a strong wintergreen flavor.

Rootbeer was originally made with sasparilla root, but it was later found that sasparilla root contained a toxin and it was phased out in favor of wintergreen.

Today, some rootbeers are made of a mix of sasparilla and wintergreen where the sasparilla has been processed to remove the toxin. These are, in my opinion the best rootbeers.

My personal favorite is Stewarts rootbeer. I recently tried a Henry's rootbeer in Alaska that was very good as well.

Years ago when I was a kid my folks had a small restaurant in the upper peninsula of Michigan, my father would make his own root beer in the kitchen in a quite large stock pot, IT WAS GOOOOOD! The guy still wont share the recipe with me. There used to be all sorts of good commercially made root beers to choose from, but over the years the different bottlers have either gone out or have been bought up and invariably the recipe gets changed, and never for the better. Now they are just carbonated sugary drinks with some flavor thrown in, although there is one root beer/hamburger stand in Independence MO(Mugs Up)that still has a decent root beer, not the best Ive ever had, but far superior to the mass produced junk commonly available!

Oh ,did you guys ever get me in trouble. (There's a shock, nothing I have ever bought due to seeing it on this site has ever gotten me glanced at askew by my dear bride!)
I was sent out to Whole foods to get:
1) Yogurt for wife
2) Baby food for baby
3) Avocado and banas to make more baby food for baby


I came home with:
1) Yogurt for wife
2) Baby food for baby
3) Avocado and banas to make more baby food for baby
4) $30 dollars worth of rootbeer.


YUMMY! So far, I like "Virgil's" the best, but I have a two more varieties to try out tonight.
Must find purveyor of MORE, MORE!!!!
Crap, now I have RBAD.

Originally Posted by majurey

I'm not too keen on liqorice, fennel, anise, pernod, ouzo, that sort of taste. But I'm still going to hunt some out and try it. Thanks!

I personally don't think root beer doesn't have much of a anise/fennel taste. I'm not a fan of the flavors you mentioned and I enjoy a good root beer time-to-time (I don't drink much soda). I do agree with the wintergreen flavor mentioned above. It's definitely a flavor that's worth trying. I quite enjoy getting a root beer barrel hard candy and enjoying that at parts of the day. Makes the flavor stay with you. This might be an option if the soda is too hard for you to find but you want to experience something close to the taste.

Rootbeer is good stuff....I don't drink it much because all the good "real" stuff is sweetened with cane sugar.....as a diabetic I usually try to avoid those things, and frankly, I'm so used to Diet sodas now that regular old sugar tastes bad..

I wish Virgil's made a sugar-free.