they only brew 600 gallons at a time, they say. which seems like a lot. but hey, i am no brewer so i dunno how big a batch of regular soda would be. also contains a bunch of wacky things like Extracts of Vanilla, Licorice, Sassafras Root Bark (does a root have a bark?!), and Aracia Extract. the licorice is very subtle, but there if you really pay attention i suppose. overall the root beer is pretty good though. one of those “sippin root beers” really, where the flavor does not hit you until you put the bottle down. creamy. pretty smooth. i approve. carry on.
Anthony’s Rating: 85
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User’s Rating: 79
# of ratings:49
| Type: | Root Beer | Comes In: | 12oz glass bottle |
| Available: | discontinued | Obtained in: | mail from popsoda.com |
| Head: | Medium | Sweetener: | cane sugar |
| Calories: | 160 | Sodium: | 75mg |
| Carbs: | 43g | Sugar: | 38g |
| Caffeine: | No | ||
| Website: | http://orcabeverage.com | ||
Ingredients: carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, extracts of vanilla, licorice, sassafras root bark, citric acid, natural flavors, acacia extract, sodium benzoate (preserves freshness)
Well I got my 11 rootbeers in from the soda pop stop. I tasted them all with my wife and friends and we all rated them then looked at your rates. I gave this one a 90, I thought it had a really good buttery caramel taste. I thought this was the best of the 11. Rick b
Yes, some roots have a bark. If you’ve ever tried jicama (good raw in salads), you likely peeled off the brown bark to get to the white fleshy part of the tuber inside. The brown papery covering on the outside of whole ginger root is also a bark.
Sassafras was originally one of the main ingredients in root beer. Traded for medicinal use and thought to be good for “whatever ails ya,” the bark was steeped as a tea. The leaves are dried, ground up, and sold as gumbo filé.
However, safarole, an essential oil of sassafras and related botanicals– which these plants produce as a natural defense against insects– has been found to cause liver damage over time. That’s why most modern root beers use an artificial flavoring, instead. If they use real sassafras, hopefully most of the safarole has been removed. However, it is mostly the safarole that gives sassafras its distinctive odor and flavor. The sassafras that grows natively along the Eastern North America (which is probably what’s in this root beer) fortunately has little safarole in it (compared to so-called Brazilian “sassafras”).
The real kicker is that safarole is the raw ingredient from which is made MDMA, known on the street as “ecstasy.” Don’t expect to get high from your root beer, though. 🙂
This was a pretty good root beer. The carbonation was ok, and it was kind of upfront. I could not really taste the flavor initially. The back end of the soda is it’s best part. On the back end, it tastes kind of “herbally” and minty and licoricey. Pretty hard to find root beer. But it’s worth it.
I’m not sure if what I have in my hand is the same. My label looks different. It does say Americana, but it says Handcrafted not Microcrafted. It also doesn’t say Creamy Style anywhere. Mine was bottled by Orca beverage company in Mukilteo, WA where half a dozen of my recent purchases came from (the bottles all look the same, with different labels, but some of the labels are ones I have heard of, like Dad’s and Sioux City, but some I had never heard of, like Red Arrow and Bedford’s, and this stuff), all from my local grocery store.