A few weeks back while on campus we ran into our friend, Lisa, who was drinking a brand of root beer I'd never heard of before. I know there's some kinds of pop with which I'm not familiar, but I didn't know there was a whole niche market devoted to manufacturing root beer. I've lived my life drinking Mug, A&W, Dad's, Barq's, and when I get really lucky, IBC. Lisa told me that there are a lot of root beers that are MUCH better than those I listed above, so we decided to hold a root beer party. Lisa shopped around for some lesser-known brands at specialty stores, and Elizabeth and I showed up today to partake of 8 different root beers.
The Lineup. (To the left of the bottles of root beer you can see the shot glasses we used to sample each different drink. I know it looks like the counter of an alcoholic, but I promise, it is ROOT beer.)
A couple of the brands were particularly nasty. The one Lisa is holding is a generic organic brand from a grocery chain. Until I'd tried some of these other, very good, kinds of root beer, I would have just considered it sort of "cheap" tasting. The one I'm holding is sweetened with agave nectar (rather than sugar or honey), and it's GROSS. It tastes really bad. I don't recommend it.
This is another picture of the eight contestants before we began trying them, and again, our shot glasses for sampling. We had a really good time trying out new kinds of root beer. A couple of them are FABULOUS. Better than I ever thought root beer could be (and it's my favorite kind of pop). After the tasting we watched Willy Wonka, because it has a scene involving fizzy lifting drinks... which are sort of like root beer.
I could go for a fizzy lifting drink right now. If I drank one right now, I'd NEVER burp!
ReplyDeleteOh fun. I wish I was there to taste rootbeer with you. (If I was invited.)
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel that I should mention that at Ashley's apartment today, she had rootbeer flavored whole milk. (!)
I just clicked into the comment portion of your blog to tell you about the rootbeer milk, but apparently Pam beat me to it :)
ReplyDeleteInstead, I will just confirm that I do, in fact, have rootbeer milk in my fridge right now.
I don't really know what to think about that, Ashley. My immediate reaction was, "That's gross," but then I started to think it might taste kind of like a root beer float. Is that true?
ReplyDelete