Happy Father's Day - Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer

I let my girls know I was going to be taste testing root beer. Lauren, my younger daughter, loves root beer. When she was younger, she called it root deer and was so excited about it that she honestly couldn’t say it without jumping a little. She came into my home office and saw all the root beers up on the hutch behind my desk and almost fell back, exclaiming “Whoa! That’s a lot of root beer!!” Laci, the older girl, does not like root beer, but she wanted to help and told me that I should start with Dad’s since it was Father’s Day.

I have always wanted to include my girls in what I am doing, so here are the results of Laci’s Father’s Day choice.

Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer

12oz bottle – brown glass with a twist top and a label.

Purchased at BevMo in a 10 pack of "Great American Root Beers" for $12.99. Cost ~$1.30/bottle.

Ingredients: Carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, sodium benzoate (a preservative), citric acid, natural and artificial flavors.

Nutrition Facts: 160 calories, 65mg sodium, Total Carb. 40g, Sugars 40g. Caffeine Free.

Lot code on the bottle - 032411

First impressions: pouring yielded no head. The flavor didn’t impress me much and seemed to have a slight bitterness to it. I called in the resident root beer lover, my 5 year old daughter Lauren to give it a taste. She said she liked it. Apparently she is easier to please than her father. While I didn’t dislike it, I found Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer to be thoroughly uninspiring.

Looking at the cap, they state “See vintage sodas made at www.orcabeverage.com” and going there, I found that they make Moxie, which I had once. I will likely never have it again unless I am somehow lost in the Sahara Desert and come across a band of travelling Bedouins who only have Moxie to barter with. Then I might have some if there is no fresh camel piss. Seriously, Moxie was that bad. This has left me a little worried about a few other root beers I have in the competition as Orca also bottles Frostie, Bulldog and Americana along with a handful of other soda brands that just couldn’t stand up to Coke and Pepsi. Sure, that might be a tough road to hoe, but RC Cola fought the good fight for a long time so it can be done.

Back to the root beer – while I certainly wouldn’t go out and buy Dad’s for a nice drinking root beer, it did do well with three scoops of Dreyer’s Grand French Vanilla. It developed a nice head when mixed with the ice cream and the foam lasted nearly as long as the ice cream. 

Flavor: 2 stars

Consistency: 2 stars

Ice Cream compatibility: 3 stars

Value: 1 star

Final score: 2 stars