For quite a while I thought “root beer” to be a fictitious beverage, like Romulan Ale or Bloodwine.
Until I stumbled upon some comments by Americans mentioning it to be a real thing!
Only problem was that it is basically unknown and very hard to find here in Germany.
After unsuccessfully trying two special US stores as well as a couple of Asia markets (after someone mentioned that it is also a thing in some Asian countries) I basically gave up.
So imagine my excitement when accidentally coming upon this can in my local Edeka market (a type of German higher end grocery store)!
Now I and my kids are ready to try it, but this should naturally be with the right background.
So: Which Star Trek episode that references it should we watch while tasting it?
We are currently watching TNG, so this would be preferred (if it even appears in there?).
I would even be ok with a Wesley centered episode… ;-)
Update:
First, thanks to you all for the suggestions! In the end we went with DS9’s “Little green men”, as other episodes would have required too much contextual knowledge (and are also much darker).
Individually perceived tastes of the Root beer varied somewhere between toothpaste and decomposed rubber.
Final verdict has been mixed:
My daughter completely hates it, my wife is not especially fond of it, I kinda like it and my son now has a new favorite soft drink :-)
The joke concerning root beer originated on DS9 s4e1 “The Way of the Warrior”
Yeah. But if you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.
It’s insidious.
As a foreigner, that scene rings true in so many levels.
It’s not a joke though.
Thanks for the suggestion!
That actually seems like it would the perfect episode to watch while drinking rootbeer!
(Found a nice blog post about the scene here: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/star-trek-most-hilarious-scene.html )But, although I remember the two-parter to be completely great, given that my children haven’t seen a single DS9 episode yet, it seems like a bit context-heavy (and also quite dark as a first introduction to DS9).
So I decided to go with the silly “Little Green Man” episode instead, which mentions root beer at one occasion and starts with Nog going off to Starfleet Academy.Solid alternative. A great bottle episode, of which there are very few in DS9.
bottle episode
Pun intended? :-)
That blog post is a little short on the details why the lines are not a joke. I recently saw a good video about it though. The Root Beer Doctrine: How the Federation Wins Without Firing
Be advised that a frozen glass mug is appropriate.
Even better if you add ice cream!
Apparently the actual chemical in sarsaparilla was banned in the US but this guy made his own.
Safrole is a precursor for MDMA
OP I don’t want to spoil your good time, but you deserve to know, not all root beer is the same!
I do not know this brand, but the line between “bad” root beer and “good” root beer seems to be clearly split by a single ingredient: “Bad” contains high fructose corn syrup, “good” contains pure cane sugar. You should be able to check the ingredients on the can, and most with pure cane sugar proudly declare it on the front of the label (which makes me worried this one may not) and they typically use glass bottles. They are more expensive but are so worth it.
I say that to say this: If you try it and don’t like it, and it does have HFCS, try it one more time but with the pure cane sugar, it really makes all the difference. My brand is IBC Root Beer, idk if you can find it or get it shipped to DE but I really won’t drink many other brands tbh, Boylan is good too. Both are on Amazon, but I understand the hesitation there, and idk if they ship to DE.
That said, also, traditionally it was made with Sassafras oil, which was banned by the FDA in the 1960s, so I’ve never had the real kind either and we never will, pure cane is the best we can do T_T
High fructose corn syrup is thankfully not a thing here in Europe.
So no domestic German soft drinks use it and also almost all of the American soft drinks I have seen so far contain normal sugar (probably not made from sugar canes, though, but doesn’t really matter), the root beer in the picture included! :-)
We will try it during our relaxed evening TV session, so I will be able to tell more in about two hours or so…!Oh good, thank “Bob” lol, HFCS is a scourge upon humanity. Enjoy!
Try another can over a scoop of vanilla ice cream
We will cautiously take some small sips of the base brew contained in the ice cooled specimen in the picture first, before considering moving on to the more advanced concepts… ;-)
To give you additional context: root beers can vary pretty strongly by brand. Here in Canada some brands lean into the licorice, others the dryness, and others still play around with levels/type of sweeteners. A&W, Barqs, and Mug would be the three root beer brands I think best show you the spectrum the drink can have.
But the Sarsaparilla base aroma is the same for all, I assume?
That was the most interesting part for us, as it is basically unknown here and we had no idea what it tastes like.
Guess kinda like all the woodruff flavored stuff not known outside of Germany - there are differences between individual dishes, but the interesting part for foreigners would be the exotic base taste itself…
Root beer is weird. Here in Denmark there are some shops that sell A&W. I’ve heard from Americans that’s the best root beer out of a can, so it’s not like we have some weird off brand stuff here…
But…
It smells like how denture tablets smell and tastes like blue mouthwash.
It’s… A unique soda, I’ll give it that. But when I think of “bubbly, sweet, and optimistic” I think of Orangina or Schweppes.
Both Orangina and Schweppes have a more or less pronounced bitter aftertaste, though (which is actually part of the reason they are so great!).
So they might well agree with Cardassian taste expectations ;-)We’ve got a local root beer company, Fitz’s. They’re awesome
Is that the same company that has those glass soda bottles in variously expensive takeaways?
I’m not sure. Could be
I’ve heard from Americans that’s the best root beer out of a can,
You’ve been lied to, there is no good canned root beer I’m aware of, afaik all the good stuff is bottled in glass (not that it has to be,) but more importantly contains Pure Cane Sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup (and for some reason they bottle that instead of canning).
It still has the sassafras flavor to it (because that is what the “root” of the “beer” is, despite sassafras oil being outlawed in the 60s so idk how they do it now), but the HFCS just sucks.
Well… It’s Europe, so I doubt it’s using high fructose corn syrup around here. Also, sugar itself is just one glucose and one fructose molecule glued together, which splits apart by itself if the environment’s acidity is high enough, so I doubt that is a major contributing factor to flavour.
I did buy one pretty expensive root beer from the Candy Megastore on Nordre Fasanvej that was in a glass bottle, but it was identical to A&W. So I dunno.
I’ve been trying to find a root beer in Copenhagen that’s called “Barq”, which Danes say tastes better than A&W, but I’ve had no luck finding it…
That’s why I’m not sure, if it were a US can I’d bet $10 on it just based on
A) It being in a can
B) It doesn’t say “made with pure cane sugar” on the front.
But in Europe they may not have to, idk! I tried looking up the ingredients online but it was inconclusive. I hope everything there is real sugar I just don’t know.
But I’ll push back on it not affecting flavor, it very much so does, trust me as someone in HFCSland. I’ve taste tested normal coke and cane sugar coke in my house with some friends and we could all tell the difference.
Barq’s is just a coke product, A&W is pepsi. Neither are really good, both HFCS, idk I guess if I have to pick one it would be barq’s but really it’s all about IBC, Boylan, or Virgil’s.
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