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Hello and welcome to the oldest, largest and frankly the best root beer reviewing site in the world! over 625 brands reviewed so far! i also throw in birch beer and sarsaparilla reviews occasionally while i am at it since to me, they are the same genre. once in a while i even detour into other branches of the root beer tree, such as spruce beer, dandelion & burdock and the like. a new review publishes every week on Monday with the random post or review of root beer related stuff every once in a while. feel free to submit your own ratings, check out the rankings from me and other visitors, see what sodas are available near you and more. make a float, tap a keg or mix some extract up and enjoy!

anthony (me) started reviewing root beer related drinks in '96 but has always loved the delicious joy of root beer and birch beer and just kept it going ever since. if you have any suggestions of features you'd like to see or sodas you want reviewed, let me know!

Frostop Imperial Root Beer

it seems Frostop is trying to work both ends of the market, which is kind of great i must admit. wise even. that is to say, they have the red birch beer in the huge plastic bottles that is sold at a lot of dollar store type places, for $1 of course, thus trying to get the low budget market. then they have this stuff, gourmet-ish (if Eric will pardon my use of the term), glass bottle root beer for the higher end type market. PLUS there is of course their regular root beer in glass to hit that mid range consumer. and of course their restaurants, which i am not actually sure is in any way affiliated with the bottled soda company or not, but i will assume not for the sake of reviewing it at some point. (actually i was there about ten years ago and took notes and photos so i will have to dig them up to write that up soon, now that i think about it). anyhow, i actually traded for two bottles of this somehow, mistakenly. not that I mind exactly if it is tasty. it is made by Spring Grove but it is a totally different recipe than their own root beer, which is a relief.
i always drink most of the soda before i even look at the ingredients or look to closely at the bottle. and this one i could tell had honey involved after the first sip. actually the first sip was a disaster. i unscrewed the cap and heard no satisfying rush of air, which made me think i had to find that second bottle, but i took a sip and it immediately fizzed up huge, spraying all over my desk before i put my hand on top and stopped it. i don't get why that happens every once in a while. if you can explain, comment or write in.
moving on, yes, honey is in here. i like that, it makes for a smooth flow and feel plus it just taste good. beyond that though, there is not much to write home about here. it is rather standard. pretty good and more complex than their regular root beer, but not by a whole lot. mainly it is less syrupy, with the cane sugar instead of corn syrup and better overall ingredients. yet i wouldn't travel the world or too far to get another bottle of this one.
Ingredients:filtered carbonated water, pure cane sugar, natural and artificial flavors, pure clover honey, citric acid, preserved with sodium benzoate to preserve freshness

Anthony's Rating: 82
User's Rating: 81
# of ratings:47
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Ithaca Soda Co Root Beer

the old Ithaca Soda Co. Root Beer was reviewed almost 14 years ago at this point. i think i bought it once more after that so don't exactly know what it tasted like. i seem to recall it rated pretty highly though. recently i checked their ingredients and saw it had changed, so was super jazzy excited to try the new blend! woo! i do hope it is even better now!
the label is actually more generic and i think a downgraded in my rather humble opinion. it is even hard to figure out just what brand it is. although not it is "soda of the finger lakes" yet in all caps. but hey, i am no marketing guru or really any sort of guru i wouldn't say. perhaps a birch beer guru? yeah, that might be the extent of my guru-ness. or is it guru-ocity? guru-ality? guru-ittude? i like that last one best. whatever, i am just making all of those up i suspect.
although, as i said earlier, i don't recall the old taste of this drink, i don't think this is an upgrade. it is one of those drinks where the carbonation just takes over too much. there is a sharp initial mouth feel and a licorice/anise taste that quickly is taken over by the carbonation bite. it isn't really an awful thing, but i just get very burpy and it makes the drink less enjoyable. the actual taste is rather good, but i feel like i can't taste it for too long. as i drink more, i think it is mellowing out more. i am getting more of a vanilla taste creeping in as well. alright, this is a better beverage. yeah, it has calmed down significantly. more of a unique taste going on, there is also some sarsaparilla hitting me as i take the last couple swallows. i don't know what would make this more consistent, it is not like you can shake a root beer to mix it better without is causing a mess. hhhmmm… so in end, a solid job by the Ithaca people. i just wish the whole bottle was as smooth as the last third.
Ingredients:carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, potassium benzoate (a preservative), citric acid, natural and artificial flavor

Anthony's Rating: 91
User's Rating: 0
# of ratings:
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Frost Creek Beverage Root Beer

first off, my apologies for the late (yes, sometimes very late) posting pics. I just moved a couple weeks ago which was a fiasco, as i really moved twice as my old house sold before my new one closed. before that i was crazy busy packing up the twenty years worth of stuff in my old house, being a dad, working my real job, and other life things, so my queue of reviews done in advance shrank down to nothing. thus i end up doing reviews Sunday night and often don't get the photo edited in time. strangely i do usually edit them on monday but then forget to upload it. anyway, on with the show!
this could very well really be private label or some other vanity label, but i am going on the assumption that it is not. it does not say it is anywhere that it is thus it probably isn't. yet it kind of has the same font in the nutritional info area as private labels. plus, looking at the website, the other flavors come in different bottles, much like Private Label does. the orange in a more rounded bottle with the short cap and the cherry soda in a similar rounded bottle but the bigger cap. whatever. in any case, the label is pretty cool.
the soda is not bad. in fact it is rather good. yet it is good in the way at least one hundred other root beers are good. it is rather smooth and has the right amount of carbonation. the taste is a good mix of herbal sassafras, a healthy bit of vanilla and some other herbs. i am enjoying it. i just wish they had done more to make it more distinct and not something that just blends in and tastes basically identical to so many others.

Anthony's Rating: 83
User's Rating: 0
# of ratings:0
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Bai Rioja Root Beer

this soda was mentioned to me some time back. I figured I'd find it eventually, i had not seen it in any local stores and did not exactly go on a quest for it. then Sagi told me he had found some at his local K Mart. since K mart is easy to get to, I didn't really prioritize it, cuz, hey I could go get it any time and i had a decent queue of root beers already to drink. but then of course K Mart had more financial issues and many were closing, including my local ones, so I rushed over there at last. luckily there were just beginning the selling process so they had a bunch of these. phew.
except for a root beer a week, I think I am a reasonably healthy fellow. i run, i bike, i race duathlons, I chase my kids around alot. so i appreciate antioxidants. my dants could always use some antioxi'ing. but i have yet to have something that tastes good that involves erythritol.
this looks cool, mostly black with some metallic copper and silver accents. even the top and pull tab are black. so that is good stuff. well done on the graphic design work at the very least.
yeah, so this is horrible. wow. it has no resemblance to root beer of any tasty sort. it is kind of like chewing on a stick, then licking a metal rod in its flavor profile. i really don't get who approved this and thought it was a good idea to make. but hey, everyone likes different stuff. i just can't fathom anyone enjoying this. there is not too terrible an aftertaste, so that is something. i give them a couple points for the design work, but this is among the worst root beers i have ever consumed. wow. why Bai, why? well, it is discontinued I have just learned when googling some of the ingredients to find out if i will be kept up all night by this or not. so maybe you can find a can or two out there if you really have a hankering for the terrible.
Ingredients:filtered carbonated water, Bai Proprietary Sweetener Blend (erythritol, stevia leaf extract), natural sassafras flavor with other natural flavors, apple extract (for color), citric acid, malic acid, white tea extract, coffeefruit extract, Vitamin C (ascorbic acid), sodium citrate

Anthony's Rating: 7
User's Rating: 0
# of ratings:0
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