Root Beer Taste Test 3: An Exquisitely Belated Run-Through

On the eve of the fourth root beer taste test, it occurred to me that I never posted the results from the third test. There were a few reasons for this. One is that the battery in my camera died before I could finish getting pictures; another is that Drew and I both felt extremely uninspired by the test, which resulted in no root beer getting a higher average score than 3.5, which basically equates to “decent” as far as taste goes. Also, I moved and the results were in a bag and I kept forgetting about them, but the taste test was on December 15, 2007 and I moved in April of this year, so that’s not really much of an excuse.

With all that said, bearing in mind that there will be no pictures (an issue that should not be repeated at taste test #4), here are the results of test #3.

A: Dad’s

Dad’s was a repeat; it appeared in the second taste test. But that Dad’s was in a plastic bottle, while this Dad’s was in a glass bottle, and I think Drew may have been a bit disappointed by the grade it got the first time, so we gave it another shot. It ended up doing pretty much the same score-wise. While Drew praised the nose as “float-y,” he subsequently commented that the “taste did not live up to” the aroma and gave it pretty much average scores, with a 3 for overall flavor. I also gave it a three overall, noting “decent anise/wintergreen hits at first,” but decrying the weak aftertaste, something Drew had gone after in the previous test. While the comments were not identical, the overall scores hewed pretty close, restoring us some credibility after the second test saw us give identical grades to what had been our highest and lowest graded root beers from the original test.

Grades: Aroma, 4; Fizz, 3.5; Creaminess, 3.5; Spiciness, 2.5; Overall Flavor, 3.

B: Thomas Kemper

I had sampled Thomas Kemper non-blind some months earlier and had found it surprisingly tasteless. This proved to be consistent; I described the sample as having “little to no aroma,” and “barely any flavor, watery, almost like weak cola.” I guessed in my notes that this was Thomas Kemper, so there you go. Drew wasn’t quite as strong against it, giving it higher scores for aroma and creaminess, but ultimately he came down in the same camp, saying there was “not much flavor.”

Grades: Aroma, 2.25; Fizz, 3; Creaminess, 2.25; Spiciness, 1.25; Overall Flavor, 1.75.

C: Main Street

Main Street is the house brand for the East Coast’s Giant chain of supermarkets, so imagine our embarrassment when this turned out to be the most popular of the bunch. (Of course, that might say something about the rest of the field, as well.) I called it “creamy” and said it had “fairly classic root beer flavor,” while Drew seemed to hedge a bit with his opinion of “drinkable,” calling it “very sweet.” Still, we both gave it 3.5 on overall flavor.

Grades: Aroma, 3; Fizz, 3; Creaminess, 3.5; Spiciness, 3; Overall Flavor, 3.5.

D: Filbert’s

Filbert’s is a local Chicago brand that seems to be made in fairly small batches; at least, I’ve only ever seen it in a single convenience store in my building. Perhaps there’s a reason for that. I found the soda very anise-heavy, with a licorice nose that reminded me of Barq’s. Drew liked the flavor at first, but found the aftertaste “bitter.”

Grades: Aroma, 3.25; Fizz, 2.5; Creaminess, 2.25; Spiciness, 2.25; Overall Flavor, 2.25.

E: Waialua

Waialua is a Hawaiian brand that turned out to be extremely evocative of its home state. Drew thought so, anyway, coyly writing “Taste of the tropics!” on his scoresheet. At the same time, he described it as “hardly even a root beer” with its “strong brown sugar aroma,” and successfully identified the brand by taste. I had a similar reaction, calling the brew “almost like ‘cane soda’” and “just not really rooty at all.” While Drew gave Waialua some of his best scores of the test, I found the lack of resemblance to a true root beer to be deserving of lower scores. We diverged here more than anywhere else on the test, with our “overall flavor” scores splitting by a full point and a half.

Grades: Aroma, 3.25; Fizz, 3.5; Creaminess, 3; Spiciness, 2.5; Overall Flavor, 2.75.

F: Dominion

I had picked up a six-pack of Dominion, a root beer from a Virginia brewery, while visiting my parents in DC in July 2007. So by the time the test rolled around, the Dominion had been sitting out for five months. The Main Street dated to the same time, but cans might retain flavor better than glass bottles – I mention all this simply to give Dominion the possible benefit of the doubt, as Drew and I both raked it over the coals in similar fashion to Point Premium from the last test. Drew described the flavor as “like a saccharine cola” and wrote “Foul!” in large letters, while I also compared the flavor to cola and complained of “almost no aroma and no spice or rootiness.” As with Point, it’s hard to believe that anything other than Blue Sky could actually have been this terrible, but then Thomas Kemper was consistently garbage on the multiple occasions when I had it, so it’s certainly possible.

Grades: Aroma, 1.75; Fizz, 2.5; Creaminess, 2.25; Spiciness, 1; Overall Flavor, 1.25.

G: Red Jammer

This was a wild card, a sort of commemorative root beer Drew had picked up in Glacier National Park. We differed a bit on this one as well; while I found “few other hits” besides wintergreen and suggested that it was “kind of like a wintergreen soda,” Drew described “lots of spicy flavors” to go along with the “refreshing wintergreen aroma.”

Grades: Aroma, 3; Fizz, 4; Creaminess, 3.25; Spiciness, 2.75; Overall Flavor, 3.

H: Deerfield Farms

Deerfield Farms is Walgreens’ new (relatively new, by this point) prestige label house brand. It didn’t fare as well as their regular house brand on our scoring system, however. We both found it flat, with no aroma; Drew did praise the flavor as “subtle but generally agreeable,” while I simply mentioned the “little root.”

Grades: Aroma, 2; Fizz, 2.5; Creaminess, 3; Spiciness, 2.25; Overall Flavor, 2.75.

And that was it for test #3. The overall winner was Main Street, with a 3.5 grade on overall flavor, which gives some clue as to why these results took so long to get posted. It just wasn’t a very inspiring test in general. However, thanks to a store in the area that imports from all around the country, I’ve gotten my hands on 15 new and totally untested (by us) root beers. So hopefully test #4 is more exciting than test #3.