anthony's root beer barrel » random junk

Welcome!

anthony — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 17:56:46 +0000

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.

help needed! vaguely root beer related!

anthony — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 23:26:34 +0000

so we all have stuff we do and like besides root beer, right? right! yes. i for one, bike, run, compete in duathlons, teach Spinning, off and on collect PEZ and visit Muffler Men as well as raise my two amazing daughters among other things.
now my awesome wife teaches at a school for kids with special needs, mainly cerebral palsy and loves it. AND (the important part) she teaches Zumba, after which she loves to raid my root beer supply and refuel until she cools down (ooo! there IS a root beer connection!) she combined these two interests by making a video with her co-workers from her zumba classes and entered a contest on facebook which we very much need your help to at least get in the top 10 of! so if this site has ever helped you or made you smile and you are on facebook, please take 10 seconds out of your day and follow this link and vote for her video. she shot, starred in and edited it all herself. while enjoying many bottles of root and birch beer i might add! =) i appreciate it very much and promise to get back to the regularly scheduled root beer news shortly. well, every 10 days at least.

thanks all so much! if we win or get to the top 10 even, i will run some awesome contests with lots of root beer prizes!

new Google Maps for availability page!

anthony — Thu, 12 May 2011 16:59:55 +0000

so, i started to work on putting all of the info from my Availability page onto a Google map but have just been busy and got lazy. then the Rootbeer Brothers posted the same idea. thus i am just putting mine up also, not nearly done and way too dominated by Culver’s locations. i had no idea there were over 400 of them! i have never even seen one so it is novel to me but perhaps it is not to most people. oh well. i will work on getting the rest of the info in there slowly over time. just gonna take a while, there is a lot! so check it out: Availability with map!

new store and association!

anthony — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 01:51:53 +0000

woo! i just found a rocking new web store and an accompanying super cool association! they have a pretty decent selection although, sadly, nothing i have not had. but still. AND they have a root beer of the month club! i get a lot of emails asking for that. not too awful a price either. i mean with postage costs to ship a 6 pack of heavy glass bottles included, the $26 per month or whatever seems fair. there was one other online place that sold only root beer which did not last so long so we really should support these peoples so they can spread the root beer gospel for as long as possible. so go check out the Root Beer Store they also have a brick and mortar retail establishment in Redmond, WA so go there too and bring me in spirit since that is the other end of the country. alas.
they also have formed the Association of Root Beer Enthusiasts or ARBE with different levels and junk. membership cards and window clings and discounts are all part of joining up. seems to all be in good fun. i joined!

rootbeer christmas movie and new articles

anthony — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 20:30:41 +0000

first off is the exciting news of the release any day now of “A Rootbeer Christmas.” it is the uplifting tale of a diner owning mother of three (3) whose ne’er do well husband leaves her and the precocious tykes just days before christmas. but she avoids homelessness and other un-christmas-y things by discovering and re-introducing an old family recipe for root beer! yes, in just days all is made better! through root beer! whoa, as Joey of Blossom fame uttered so many times before. by the way, did anyone else see current day Blossom on “What Not To Wear?” she was still living the Blossom life. good work Mayim! anyway, her faith and belief also help in this root beer tale. not Blossom’s, the diner owning mom lady. sorry for the confusion. now we need “A Rootbeer Hanukkah,” the tale of the barrel of root beer which never runs out and feeds a very thirsty orphanage of young jewish orphans who are oh so cute and innocent yet street savvy. they await adoption by a wonderful family but because of the shoddy construction practices of the owner and city. they are trapped by a mudslide with only a small barrel of root beer to sustain them for eight (8) days and nights. of course when they are rescued each and every of them is adopted by bald billionaires. or something….

then we have a couple of new articles on root beer, which i always find fun, especially when they link to me!

Table Manners, which seems to be a site about Philadelphia food and junk posted “the American Root Beer Story” which is a fine, albeit brief, history of root beer. nice work, aspiring food writer Erica Hope!
Charleston, SC’s Post and Courier has an article entitled “Spicy, retro root beer perfect for fall” with a mini taste test and a couple of recipes involving root beer. plus some general root beer praise and junk. interesting too.

new root beer article at serious eats

anthony — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 19:19:45 +0000

they had done a national brands root beer taste test which i found very lacking and the but now they have done a regional taste test which i much more agree with the results of. interesting to me at least. the real review of the top 10 is in the slideshow thing that is sort of hard to find. it would have been nice to have that more upfront. oh well. check it out though.

new review sites

anthony — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:58:11 +0000

i recently came across some new review sites i thought you all might find interesting so i thought i’d share.

Thirsty Dudes – three straighedge fellows who review all sorts of drinks. this includes a good amount of root beers in there. they are absolutely flying through drinks and will surpass what i have done in my 14 years or so in about a year if they continue this madness!
Fear No Root Beer – another root beer review site, obviously. they are quite extensive in their treatment of each soda, which is nice. plus they seem to be from NJ also, so they must rock. they don’t have a lot of reviews yet but i like their style. hopefully they keep it up. and fix their commenting system, i can’t do it in firefox or IE.

bigger photos

anthony — Tue, 04 May 2010 19:54:00 +0000

so i have had a few requests for me to put up bigger photos of the bottles and cans. i did implement it but i have to go back and find the original images in order to make them good quality for older and even current reviews.
so right now, reviews that will publish next May and after are all set! =) you will be able to click the small image and get the big one.
i will see what kind of time i get to do this image creation so it may take some time. i also am not sure i even have a lot of the original photos anymore. a lot of the first couple years were actual, physical photographs and i doubt i will go scan those even if i knew where they were. it is time consuming to crop and adjust each bottle. i also have to watermark the images so all of those rotten root beer bottle image thieves will be thwarted as they should be! we shall see.
any other desired features, let me know.

hello new people!!

anthony — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:19:44 +0000

wow, so i did not quite expect the huge traffic spike as a result of Modern Marvels! crazy! mainly since they did not ever say the site address or name. i had about 10 times more traffic than usual yesterday and i am quite surprised my server handled it ok. very good.
anyway, welcome new visitors! thanks for finding me. enjoy a frosty one and feel free to browse around. there are 430 reviews up right now with new ones posting every 12 days for at least the next year or so. hopefully longer if i find more sodas. click on “Reviews” above to go to the alphabetical list of all of the sodas i have reviewed in the past 14 years. you can submit ratings for each one under their reviews. if you click on “Rankings” you can see what sodas i and users each rated highest. or lowest. sign up to receive updates or just follow me on Twitter to see when i post new reviews. i have sodas lined up for the next year already so no worries there. send me a message and i will be sure to get back to you soon. and come back again soon.
oh! if you can get any of the sodas in my WANTED section, i would be more than happy to pay all costs. or trade with you. also if there any any sodas you can get that you don’t see reviewed, i probably want em! so write to me. please. kthxbye

Modern Marvels! at last

anthony — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 19:39:50 +0000

so finally the episode of Modern Marvels that i am briefly in, “Soft Drinks”, will be aired this Thursday, April 8th at 8 pm EST on the History Channel. it will also be on a few more times in the week or so after that at various times, so check your local listings. i am [...]