Welcome to Brews Of Root Extraction Online. This post reviews A&W root beer, which some consider to be the grandaddy of them all. I don’t know too much about that, but I do know that the A&W you buy in stores (I purchased the brew for this review from a national chain grocery store, $6.99 for 8-12 oz bottles) is a completely different drink from the A&W you can get on draft at an A&W burger joint. In bottles and cans, it is produced by Dr. Pepper/7-up based in Plano, TX.
I use five criteria I score from 1-5 to evaluate brews.
A. Sweetness: 3. It’s fine, but before I ever looked at the label I could taste the light, absent-body sweetness of high-fructose corn syrup (which I confirmed upon looking at the label afterward). I’m admittedly biased, but I grew up with cane sugar, so I’m not a great fan of corn sugar.
B. Lightbody spices: 4. This is probably the highlight of bottled A&W. There’s a healthy amount of wintergreen at the front end…not much else, but it’s good that it has a little bit of bite to it. The other flavors in this brew tasted fairly “chemical”, and the wintergreen helps hide that.
C. Heavybody spices: 2. Vanilla extract (not very natural tasting), with maybe just the tiniest hint of anise added.
D. Uniqueness: 1. The only thing unique about this brew is the uniquely strong (and bad) aftertaste that lingers for quite a long time after drinking it. I’ve had plenty of sodas with bad aftertastes, but they were almost all “diet” or “zero sugar” sodas. This is a sugared drink that leaves an aftertaste, something between citric acid and tonic water.
E. Mouthfeel: 2. There’s enough carbonation, but the brew is too watery and light. You’d think they would have come up with some kind of additive to help with the body.
Total score 12/25. If you want to sample real A&W root beer, go to an A&W restaurant. Get the draft root beer in the glass mug.
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