Virgil’s is the real deal.  After tasting a few kind of weak root beers, Virgil’s was a nice refreshing surprise.  This brewed root beer is made with a nice eclectic mix of spices and roots and has quite a challenging and complex flavor.  Like Bundaberg, Virgil’s tastes like it’s made with love and care, and has the feeling of “secret recipe”.  This kind of root beer doesn’t usually appeal to the masses, but for those weird people like me, this beverage will come as a nice alternative to mainstream root beers.

The predominant first flavors are molasses and anise, followed by licorice and wintergreen.  This stuff just gets better with every swallow.  I just found a new addition to the list of favorites!

Monthly Root Beer Rating: 9

www.virgils.com

Berghoff root beer is a Chicago institution, and is still made along with a few other select flavors from the old classic Berghoff restaurant.  While the restaurant apparently closed a few years ago, the demand for the soft drinks was high enough that a beverage company was created to continue production.  This is a draft style root beer, and therefore sort of mild in it’s carbonation.  The overall flavor is not very intense, and is predominately of yucca root and cane sugar with a slight acidity.

This root beer is lower calorie than most, coming it an 125, instead of the usual 160-175 for most root beers, and as a result doesn’t have that over sweetened feel that most high fructose corn syrup flavored beverages have.  The phrase that came to mind though was “lightly flavored sugar water”.

I really wanted to like this root beer more than I did, mainly for the history.  But quite frankly, I thought it was pretty bland and uninspired, while still pleasant.

Monthly Root Beer Rating: 3

This stuff is crap.  Just utter crap.

Monthly Root Beer Rating: 1

www.zevia.com

Hank’s is some pretty good stuff.  They’ve been making beverages for about 40 years in Pennsylvania, but they’ve only made the root beer since 1996.  It’s light and airy, almost tropical somehow, with a light acidity that reminds me of citrus fruit.  Perhaps it’s Hank’s redefinition of “root” beer that gives it a different flavor; it’s got yucca and quillaia in it.  I have no freaking clue what quillaia is, but it seems to taste pretty dang yummy.  This root beer is pretty expensive, though, at least here in the south, and it ends up at about $2 a bottle.  Possibly not worth that kind of cash as a repeat drinker, but ok for a treat every once in a while…

Monthly Root Beer Rating: 7

http://www.hanksbeverages.net

Dr. Rootbeer's Premium Brew!

I found the good Doctor last year when my family was on vacation at the beach here in North Carolina.  Imagine my surprise when I saw a sign advertising “Dr. Rootbeer’s Hall of Foam”!  It ended up being a good 30 minutes away from where we were staying, but dammit, it was craft made root beer.  The Doctor’s shop is a pretty cool converted gas station loaded with root beer memorabilia, and he runs it with his wife.  It’s a great place to get a hot dog and a root beer float and hang out with the kids.

So, the root beer: it’s good.  It’s not spectacular.  Quite carbonated and made with HFCS, it sort of tastes like a bottled root beer flavor was used instead of creating a custom flavor from scratch.  A bit disappointed there, especially at the price point of $6-8 a 6-pack.  Anyway, it was a nice place, and I would go back if I was in Snead’s Ferry, NC, but I wouldn’t go way out of my way to get the root beer.

Side note: the doctor himself is a nice guy to talk to and knows a lot about root beer and soda.  You can tell this is a lifelong passion for him!

Monthly Root Beer Rating: 5

www.drrootbeer.com