And The Winner

..of the Great Root Beer Taste Test is…

Not this one:

Dang that root beer.

 

This one was ‘butterscotch’ root beer. It tasted just like it sounds; sickly. Dang it, that root beer was almost nasty. These are the varieties I sampled; all new to me:

Fitz’s and Faygo were both extremely pleasing, Stewart’s was pleasant enough and Route 66 and Frosty were so-so. In the end the winner came down to having all natural ingredients and being made from cane sugar.Traditional root beer is made from sassafras bark or sarsaparilla root; the label didn’t specify from whence came it’s flavouring agent but it sure was tasty.  Drum roll please. And the winner of the best tasting root beer in my neighbourhood goes to:

Fitz’s is mighty fine.

 

But I may want to rethink that. I just read on Wikipedia that natural sassafras has been banned by the FDA because it contains safrole which  is carcinogenic. Whaaat? Suck all the fun out of root beer now, why don’t ya. Oh. You can get safrole-free sassafras extract. Sounds like a lot of trouble when you can use fake root beer flavouring. And who is to say that the fake stuff isn’t carcinogenic. Have they looked? What the heck; I’ll take a Fitz’s and take the risk.

Judy Parsons 2019

Email comments to jgparsons@judypstickletrunk.com

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