My local grocery store has just started carrying Jones Pure Cane Root Beer. Normally, I get Stewart’s, which is the best I can get there (IBC is my other choice … well I’m sure there’s Shasta or something in cans, but … c’mon), so I’m wondering if anyone has an opinion on the Jones stuff. Is it worth the premium over Stewart’s?
To me Jone’s is too sweet. It’s worth a taste, but I would stick with Stewart’s.
Moved from IMHO to CS.
Aw, crap. Sorry Frank!
Give Hansen’s Signature Sarsaprilla a try if you can find it.
This brings to mind the root beer tasting that my buddy did a few years back at his housewarming. We picked up a few bottles of every root beer they had on the shelves at the local BevMo and then did a blind taste-test with at least 20 people ranking every sample.
The winner by a long shot was one of the major brands - I think it was Barq’s or A&W. The “microbrews” didn’t do very well, many of them were unpleasant and several were universally reviled by all tasters.
Try Henry Weinhard’s Root Beer if you can find it.
IMO, all of the above are completely demolished when compared to Boylan’s.
(which also makes a very excellent and properly spicy birch beer, incidentally)
A&W is a brilliant root beer at a reasonable price. If you think you like IBC, take a sip after having the A&W. It will be the last IBC you buy.
I don’t know if that’s fair. There are a number of things that will taste “off” or worse when consumed immediately following some other particular thing; that doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t like them, or don’t prefer one over the other if sampled individually.
Sprecher’s root beer is purty good.
A&W has an unpleasant creamy taste to it. Sprecher and Birghoff are far superior.
Well, you could try the IBC first for fairness. I thought I liked it. In fact, I thought it was the bomb. It isn’t. It’s a flat weird syruppy thing. I still like the cream soda, mind you.
I was never into root beer but my dad looked for Masons.
Virgil’s is my favorite from the root beers I’ve drank.
Virgil’s is the best I’ve had that’s not a local one (a local beer brewery here also makes delicious root beer,) but Stewart’s is my second fave, and is a bit cheaper so I go to it more often. IBC is good too, and we have it at work, so I actually drink that the most since free is even cheaper than the Stewart’s. 
Which one is this? I travel through Burlington a bit and I’d keep an eye out for it.
I must third Sprecher’s, who also brew some fine regular beer.
And the A&W root beer that you get from the stands (not the mall/gas station fast food places) in a half gallon milk jug. Nothing is finer to bring home on a sweltering summer day.
edit: dual post
Oh, man one of my favorite outings as a kid was to the A&W Drive-In. Those root beer floats and chili dogs with all the fixin’s! Pardon me while I swoon…