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Hello and welcome to the oldest, largest and frankly the best root beer reviewing site in the world! i also throw in birch beer and sarsaparilla review while i am at it. 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 soda review publishes every monday with the occasional random post or review of root beer related stuff. 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. anthony (me) started reviewing sodas in ’96 but has always loved the delicious joy of root beer and birch beer.

Jeff’s Amazing New York Root Beer Float Egg Cream

i guess i should qualify this before i really start by saying that i don’t like egg creams much. although this is one of the better ones i have had. they just make me feel sort of nauseous, the tastes and textures and feel of it is all wrong and mixed up. if you like egg creams i think you may enjoy this. very creamy and i guess it tastes somewhat like a root beer float. who knows… it does have real milk and cream in it so you’d think it should have an expiration date, but no. must be like that cheese you can get in those twin packs with the summer sausage on the counter of 7-11s across the land. magic dairy products.
Ingredients:carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, milk, cream, vegetable gum stabilizers, natural and artificial flavors, caramel color, phosphoric acid, potassium benzoate and potassium sorbate (preserves freshness), Red No. 40

Anthony’s Rating: 20
User’s Rating: 43
# of ratings:19
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Reading Draft Blueberry Birch Beer

oh wait, one more. the odd one of the bunch! honestly i am kind of scared of this. when i saw it on the website, i was excited, it is different, interesting. i love blueberries, i love birch beer, why not?! then i thought, i love ice cream and ketchup and THAT combo just did not work out so well. i also failed to notice the color of this drink until just now when i took it out of the fridge. as it is in a dark brown bottle, everything looks pretty dark brown in it. but no, it is bright bright blue, much like the tuxedo i wore to my senior prom, which sadly i have no link to show you. in way i like that but i also am scared for my tongue and my innards being stained after this. not that anyone will see my innards anytime soon i don’t think. but who knows? it is like your mom telling you to always put on clean underwear in case you get in an accident. always keep your innards unstained in case you get gutted for some reason.
after tasting this a few times i actually am not sure how i feel about it. it definitely reminds me of something but i am quite hesitant to tell you what it is as i have found that people either love the stuff or hate it and may have bad associations with this product. i know my amazing wife hates it so it would bias her to tell her that this tastes like what i am thinking of. oh well, whatever, it is my function to tell you these things. personally i love the taste of Pepto Bismol which is what i have been alluding to for the past several sentences here. so yeah, a less creamy, less thick, carbonated version of pepto. now if that appeals to you, go get some of this. if not, you can give it a shot anyway. for those of you who do not know what the taste is, i will go into more detail. it is, i suppose, what i would imagine blueberry birch beer to be like, take the minty wintergreen of birch beer, add in a fruity taste that is more of a blue raspberry than a blueberry taste to me and you about have this down. it is alright. more of a very occasional drink than something i will crave often or much at all. i find it difficult to believe that there is no artificial color in this… i am guessing they put the same ingredient list on all of their sodas and just skipped that element on those that have it. perhaps the “natural and/or artificial flavors” are really bright blue? yeah, must be.
Ingredients:triple filtered carbonated water, pure cane sugar, natural and/or artificial flavors, caramel color, citric acid, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness)

Anthony’s Rating: 66
User’s Rating: 85
# of ratings:4
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Root Beer Jelly

I have a very fun wife. she fully supports my root beer love. often that involves getting one of the sodas on the left side of the fridge (the right side is the ‘for review’ only side), opening it up, taking a swig and shaking her head with her eyes closed, saying “bleh!” although she does indeed quite like some root beers and loves a good white birch, she doesn’t drink much soda but sometimes wants just a hit. it is very cute and fun. i am then given a cold, open bottle with a gulp missing. as i don’t really drink a lot of soda myself outside of for reviewing, it kind of gets me to drink more of it.
she also gets me super fun presents like this, root beer jelly! and one other recent present which i will write up soon too but will leave as surprise for now.

so root beer jelly… at first i was a little taken aback i will admit. what do you do with root beer jelly? on toast seems a little weird. just on bread might be good. peanut butter? a pb & rbj? hhhmmm, yeah i can see that. fluff actually came to mind as a very yummy option, but i’d have to get some vegan fluff somewhere and that is not always so easy. but hopefully i can do that and try that option. by itself this is actually good. better than i expected. it is very sweet and has a traditional, expected root beer flavor, in a good way. i expected the subtle flavor of a gummy root beer bottle but this is very much root beer flavored. i am not sure what they used to achieve that, root beer extract or perhaps some root beer reduction or something but it worked out pretty well.
with peanut butter it works too. i tried creamy since chunky seemed wrong somehow. root beer should not have a crunchy aspect. well, maybe if it is a candy or something… but yeah, it works, the flavors play off each other well. would i want to drink a peanut root beer soda? hhhmm, i doubt it. peanut drinks seem a little scary. it might be good though.
there seem to be several root beer jellies out there so i will have to see if i can get a brand name or something attached to this one. i don’t see it available on etsy right now so perhaps it is an occasional thing for this vendor.
i will try to get some fluf and report back. for now, i will think about other uses.
thanks wifey!
Anthony’s Rating: 81
User’s Rating: 0
# of ratings:0
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Sprecher Boom Chugga Lugga Cherry Root Beer

Jon is probably the only person i know who has more root beers than me. we have made a couple of trades in the past but as time goes on, it gets harder for each of us to find more sodas that the other has not had. if something new comes out, often we both get it. but we worked out another trade here and that is a good thing. a very good thing! Nine new sodas for me! hoorah!

this one is tricky. it comes in a Sprecher bottle, is made by Sprecher, but sold by Cherry Republic. i supposed i should probably file it under “Cherry Republic” instead of “Sprecher” but i decided not to.
i was pretty excited for this. afterall, besides root beer and the like, cherry soda is probably my favorite soda. i have considered starting a sister site to review cherry sodas even. i think ginger brews would be interesting too actually but they don’t vary quite as much as root beers or cherry sodas. anyway… so cherry and root beer together? hhhmmm, that could work. but does it? before i answer that, i will digress.
the label has a drawing of a bear picking cherries from the roots of a cherry tree. that is kind of clever and cute. more so since their normal cherry soda has the same bear picking cherries from the top of a cherry tree. they also make a cherry cola but that does not seem to have a witty illustration on its label. alas. the rest of the label has a background to make it look like wood. fine, whatever.
ok, so the taste? eh, it is ok. not really root beer tasting which is a bit surprising, being made by Sprecher and all. although there are no ingredients that would indicate it should have any root beer taste anyway. the cherry taste is definitely there, but not overpowering. it is a sweet, dark cherry taste with a little tart edge to it. hefty, not light and refreshing or anything. as a drink it is just ok. as a root beer, it disappoints. there is a little something beyond the cherry taste, a hint of something more, which could be the root beer aspect. it isn’t bad, it just isn’t awesome which i think it could have been.
Ingredients:carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, cherry juice concentrate, natural and artificial cherry flavor, citric acid, and sodium benzoate (preservative)

Anthony’s Rating: 76
User’s Rating: 52
# of ratings:1
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Tommyknocker Root Beer Float

a few months ago my girlfriend and I went to Utah, to go to three national parks, do a load of hiking, see some rad stuff and all of that. and we did indeed do all of that. i was a bit saddened though that i did not find any new root beers, especially in Moab, that seemed the perfect place for a wacky brewery to be. that is until one of the last days when we stopped at a random store in a small town for some snacks for our final car ride back to Salt Lake City. and in the refrigerated section of that grocer’s inventory was the full line of Tommyknocker sodas! i was excited, mainly because i quite enjoyed their regular root beer but also because this soda was there too! but i never tried it until now.
here is the short review for those of you pressed for time: it tastes like bubble gum, exactly.
now for the longer part: yup, it really does indeed taste just like bubble gum. how in the world is that anything like a root beer float? what are you thinking Tommyknocker people?! i think this stuff may in fact be discontinued and i definitely see why, if so. if not, i think it should be as this wreaks mass havoc upon the fine name of “Tommyknocker!” so let this be a plea to anyone in anyway affiliated with that company, stop them! now! please?
Anthony’s Rating: 22
User’s Rating: 45
# of ratings:8
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