There must be some way for me to work that fact into an evil plan. There simply must; it’s axiomatic.
From DS9 (TV Show);
[Garak takes a drink of root beer]
Quark: What do you think?
Garak: It’s vile.
Quark: I know. It’s so bubbly and cloying and happy.
Garak: Just like the Federation.
Quark: And you know what’s really frightening? If you drink enough of it, you begin to like it.
Garak: It’s insidious.
Quark: Just like the Federation.
I thought the giant scoop of vanilla ice cream was the most obvious flavor component. 
Yeah. It’s one of the biggest brands, if not the biggest. We even have a fast food restaraunt with the name and one of its selling points is that you can get it “on tap” in frosty mugs.
Fantastic stuff, too. I don’t care for canned root beer, but fresh from A&W or any bottled root beers are far and away superior.
Me too.
I’d also call it very medicinal. Something that makes me feel like I’m at the dentist, not having a nice drink.
Dandelion & burdock was what I was going to mention - though that doesn’t seem popular itself these days
And definitely medicinal tasting – If you told kids that root beer was good for them, you’d never get them to drink it
Sainsburys in the UK used to sell a root beer, possibly still do, haven’t looked
There is an American root beer I really liked in New York (can’t remember the brand) - but in the same way capers, ricard, anchovies, marmite, absinth, stilton, chillies etc make you say “Sweet Jesus! - are you trying to kill me?” the first time you taste them.
Every now and then, when I read one of these threads, I do get a slight urge to try some root beer, on the twin assumptions that there may well be a brand I’d like, and that McDonald’s have probably never sold the best of anything. But of course, they don’t sell it here.
Now though, thanks to the modern miracle of The Ads At The Bottom Of The Page, it seems I can order some.
But somehow, £24 seems a lot for a case of something that may just taste like shite.
It is, but strangely, A&W is big in Malaysia, and I think I saw one in Singapore too.
To describe to a Brit, I’d say “it’s like Coke mixed with the smell of Germonlene. But horribly sweet.”
I am a rare foreigner who likes the stuff (albeit about twice a decade or so).
Describing the flavor of Root Beer is like describing the flavor Jagermeister. You just have to taste it, there’s too many different things in there to really pick one out.
Thomas Kemper’s Root Beer
To the OP:
The reason, so far as I can tell, that Root Beer isn’t seen much outside of the US is that sarsparilla flavored cough syrup or some other medicine became prevalent outside the US. Probably it was flavored that way because so many people liked sarsparilla as a drink, but the medicine crossed the ocean before the drink did, and a gazillion children were subjected to alcohol-induced, way-too-strongly flavored medicine. Now they’re all screwed so far as tasing the real version could ever go.
It’s odd, but I have never liked A&W rootbeer. It always left a vague taste in the back of my mouth that reminded me of how trash smells. I don’t know why.
I like other brands, Thomas Kemper comes to mind, along with Barqs, which has a nice sort of bite to it. I’ve even had homemade natural rootbeer. It was interesting and I liked it at the time.
So there’s at least two differences here. Not only are the names switched, but what is used as a mixer for alcoholic drinks is opposite.
Actually, in the United States, ginger beer is not really very well known and not very popular. The two most common brands are Reed’s (which is fantastic) and Stewart’s (which is way too sweet).
For those in the UK. You can get Carter’s Root Beer in cans from ASDA, 2L bottles from Sainsbury’s. You can get Bundaberg Root Beer in glass bottles from Waitrose. Online, from American Soda you can get Barq’s, A&W, IBC and Mug. From The Canada Shop you can buy Barq’s and A&W, they also have a shop in London. There’s usually some up on Ebay too.
Personally I prefer Bundaberg Root Beer. I didn’t like A&W or Barq’s. Carter’s isn’t that good either but it is cheap and readily available… Bundaberg Root Beer is Australian.
Try horehound candies, with maybe a little wintergreen or vanilla in the mix.
I think Jager is easier to describe: cough medicine mixed with liquorice.
Ditto misbunny in re ginger ale and ginger beer.
More observations about the two:
There is a broad category of beverages based on carbonated water and sugar with flavor added. You buy them at the store in plastic bottles or in cans, and at a bar typically from a dispensing machine where they mix drinks, and you serve yourself out of a different dispensing machine at fast food restaurants like McDonalds. The commonest flavors are cola, “7-Up” or some lemon lime sort of flavor, root beer, orange, ginger ale, grape, “Dr. Pepper” or “Mr. Pib” or some similar flavor (which I think is like almonds or maybe mixed fruit including cherry). All the big manufacturers of these things have an offering in pretty much each of these flavors and they’re all interchangeable in price and package appearance, differing in flavor and drink color and label color. I think “soda” or “soda pop” is a typical name for this category. Like I say, ginger ale goes here.
Then there are other drinks based on sweetned carbonated water with flavor, but these drinks don’t fall into such a uniform product line. They’re more expensive. Many are made by companies that only make one or two or three flavors. The bottles are generally glass, and smaller, and shaped and decorated differently. I’ve never seen any of these dispensed out of a machine. Ginger beer is in this group, if you can even call it a group. Ginger beer shares having water, sugar, carbonation, and ginger flavoring, with ginger ale. But the similarity ends there. Ginger beer is usually spicy hot, sometimes very much so. The ginger flavor is much stronger (which is funny, because I think of beer and ale themselves as being the weaker and the stronger versions of the same category of drink, in opposite order). In my opinion, ginger ale is refreshing and the colder the better, whereas ginger beer is better for serving cool and sipping more slowly.
For those in Australia, you can buy A&W (both normal and diet) root beer and creamy soda from a place called USA Foods in Melbourne - they do online sales of softdrink plus a wide range of other food and confectionery.
I do like it, but other non-US people I’ve introduced it to say it’s very much like cough mixture - fairly much universally unpopular here.
Barq’s brand has a strong anise flavor and tastes like black licorice. A&W doesn’t taste quite as strong.
This reminds me of the time a couple of years ago I was reading a French travel guide to the U.S. In the section on eating and drinking, I remember this paragraph. (Translated from French, to the best of my recollection: )
“One drink you must try while in the United States, because it is so popular, is something called root beer. Not because it is good. In fact, you will probably find it has disgustingly sweet flavor of a sort you’ve never tasted in your life before. But it will give you a sense of what normal Americans like to drink.”
Ed