The Great Root Beer Taste Test 2: Test Greater is currently scheduled for Saturday, February 3, 2007.  As usual, Alma is slated to administer and be her awesome self; Drew and I are the only confirmed tasters though the popularity of the cola test with my new roommate allows for the possibility of some guest tasters.  We'll see.

Phase One: The Obtaining of the Root Beer

This part was completed largely in one four-hour swoop on Wednesday, January 31.  Drew and I left my apartment at about ten after six and I finished hauling the root beer upstairs at about ten o'clock.  The order of business involved heading to a number of different locations to pick up new brands.  The thing was, it seemed like every time we got somewhere, there were more brands than we were even expecting.  Usually I'd leave it at that, but you might as well get a sense of what exactly this took:

STOP ONE: Sunset Foods in Northbrook.  I was hoping, based on some research, to find something called Myers Avenue Red here.  They didn't have that, but they did have Dog 'n' Suds, which I hadn't expected to find at all, plus Berghoff in a glass bottle (it won the last taste test, you may recall, and that was from plastic) and Natural Brew, which I hadn't accounted for in my initial tally of how many root beers to expect.  Including the Dr. Brown's can Alma had bought earlier in the week and the Walgreens house brand root beer Drew had picked up earlier in the day, we were now at five.

STOP TWO: Binny's Beverage Depot in Highland Park.  I heard a rumor, which turned out to be true, that Henry Weinhard's could be found here.  Much to my surprise and delight, however, they also had Point Premium and Blumer's, Wisconsin brands I wasn't expecting to see in Illinois.  They had even a fourth brand (Napa Valley something) but I couldn't carry four out, plus it didn't look as good (the bottles were kind of dusty).  Anyway, even without that one, we were already at eight.

STOP THREE: We stopped at World Market in Evanston looking for two brands, Bulldog and Hank's, that we had seen during our search for cola.  Both were there and no more, but after just three stops, the count was ten.

STOP FOUR: We expected to get two at Whole Foods - 365 and Blue Sky - but Blue Sky turned out to have two separate brands, so we headed out with thirteen.

STOP FIVE: Wild Oats Market was kind of a crapshoot.  My research suggested that an independent brand called Maine Root might be found here.  It wasn't, but we picked up Hansen's (saving us a trip to Trader Joe's), the Wild Oats house brand, and a bottle of Boylan Natural, which appears to be different from the regular Boylan.  This put us up to sixteen.

STOP SIX: We had planned to go to another Binny's in Chicago where I knew they had Windy City Soda and Sioux City root beer.  It would have been closed by the time we got back to Lakeview, so we swung by the Binny's on Dempster in Skokie to see if they had anything different.  They had the exact same two (though they also had Dog 'n' Suds, plus Frostie, though they were sold out of it), so we left there with eighteen.

STOP SEVEN: I went to Target while Drew went to Dollar Tree.  He emerged with massive bottles of Dad's and Faygo, while I was forced to purchase 12-can packs of Jones and Market Pantry, the Target house brand.  Either way, this left us with a total of twenty-two.

That's right, 22 brands, only one of which was a holdover from the last taste test (although Boylan is halfway there).  You can see the results of this madness in the picture at the top of the page.  Throw in the A&W and Mug we planned to buy to use for comparison to the previous test (and as something of a baseline due to their major-label nature) and that's 24.  I set a hard limit of 25 earlier in the week, but I never thought we'd push right up against it.  Alma warned that we might get tired late in the game, but I guess we'll see.  I think we did pretty well through 22 cola samples, especially considering that we don't really like cola all that much.  Root beer, on the other hand...

UPDATE: Drew picked up Frostie, a 68-year-old brand hailing from Baltimore, at the downtown Chicago Binny's today (2/1), as well as a can of A&W.  We decided to make do with just two holdovers, and a good thing too, because an impromptu jaunt up to Wisconsin also netted us Black Bear Root Beer, though unfortunately no Frostop or Gray's.  Altogether this puts us at twenty-five, which was my hard limit earlier and thus where we will finish.  That's 23 totally new brands, incidentally, giving us 38 total brands sampled (once the test happens).

Phase Two: Deciding on Ratings Criteria

Last time we did aroma, fizz, saltiness, spiciness, and overall flavor.  This time we decided to replace saltiness with creaminess, which made more sense to us.  Otherwise it's going to be pretty much the same deal.

Phase Three: Not This Again

On Saturday, February 3, 2007, the test was completed.  On Sunday, July 1, 2007, I finally got around to posting the freaking results.