One of the wonders of the West I’ve introduced the wife to is root-beer floats. She loves them. So do I. I think root-beer floats would do wonders for world peace if anyone would think to spread them around a little more.
The rains have finally started, but it’s still hot as blazes outside. So yesterday (Sunday) I went to the little shop downstairs and picked up a small carton of the only flavor they had on hand at the moment, something called Rocky Chocky (or Chocky Rocky?) from Wall’s. (Wall’s, a British brand, is Good Humor in the US, I think.) I know traditionally you’re supposed to use vanilla ice cream for root-beer floats, but the wife turns up her nose at all things vanilla on all occasions. And I’d been dripping sweat from cleaning our balcony, and I fixed us a couple of BIG glasses. Mmmmm.
And we prefer a sweeter root beer like Mirinda over A&W, which is a little too sharp for our tastes (except, oddly, in A&W shops, which we do have over here). You can only get A&W in cans here anyway, while Mirinda comes in large bottle.
Love love love root beer floats, and have since I was kid, when my parents would sometimes take me to a greasy spoon near the highway - good cheeseburgers and root beer floats I still fondly remember.
Nowadays I’m partial to IBC root beer, but have no objection to A&W.
Probably that’s it, because the root beer at the A&W shops here is good.
It’s not the only example of something tasting different over here, although they usually make it sweeter if anything. Sprite and 7-Up are much sweeter here than in the US.
No, no Barq’s, but I remember it. Over here, we have only Mirinda in bottles and A&W in cans.
Barq’s isn’t really that good, it’s just the caffeine in it that gets you addicted.
A&W is good, sure. Let it sit out for a while if you want it to taste more like it does at the draft. In my experience, the draft is barely carbonated at all. They also use more syrup, but I’m not sure how to mimic that.
And the bad thing about diet is not just the taste, but that it foams up really bad when you mix it with ice cream. And, unlike regular root beer, the foam doesn’t taste like the drink, but actually amplifies the artificial sweetener taste.
I did a blind taste test a few years ago with several friends and my dad, who has been a great lover of rootbeer floats (primarily A&W) his whole life. I bought ever variety I could find in five different stores. This included A&W, Barq’s, IBC, and several others. There was no comparison at all, Virgils was ranked best by everyone, and the others were all midrange to poor in comparison. It makes an absolutely beautiful float, too.
There’s nothing wrong with A&W, but there’s a whole world of truly great root beer above it. The high-quality root beers come only in glass bottles.
And diet pop, of any variety, is truly vile. I’ll take you’uns’ word that diet root beer is even worse than others, because I’m not going to try any of that stuff again to confirm it.
there are multiple types of root beer float ecstasy.
A&W tap root beer with A&W soft serve ice cream is excellent.
so is hard ice cream in home made root beer. this also has the advantage that if the ice cream is dense enough and the root beer chilled that you can refill the root beer before all the ice cream is gone (leads to root beer bloat).
I don’t always agree with you (I rarely agree with anybody) but you have a point.
I wish to clarify that I was not speaking of using Diet A&W in a float, but in drinking it chilled but neat. Diet root beer in floats is an abomination in the eyes of God.
I agree that diet root beer is generally an abomination, but I happened to pick up a bottle of A&W Ten the other day and it was excellent for a diet soda. It has just enough sugar to mask the aspartame flavor.
But no, you shouldn’t use diet soda in a float. It’s just silly.