World’s Best Root Beers Ranked

I have been drinking beer ever since I was a kid.  My parents would only let me drink one each day growing up but I almost always chose the good stuff.  I remember running home to grab a cold one and then climbing up into my tree fort or heading down to the dock on a summer afternoon like a Norman Rockwell painting.  What could be more American than a kid and his beer.  Root beer that is, wink, sparkle tooth smile, groan.  A frosty root beer with a creamy foamy top is even more satisfying than a horrible dad joke.

Best Root Beers: an American Legend

Root beer truly is American. Sassafras root beverages were made by indiginous peoples of the Americas before Europeans ever even landed here. Just like Columbus “discovered” America, a pharmacist named Charles Hires, “invented” root beer in the mid 1800s. He changed the name from root tea to root beer so Pennsylvania coal miners would start drinking it. I bet that worked exactly once.

Like Coke, and Dr Pepper, root beer was originally marketed out of drug stores for health benefits. However, coke originally had cocaine in it, nobody even knows what the 23 flavors were in original Dr Pepper, and root beer had safrole in it which is used today in making ecstasy. Since sassafras was found in the 1960s to cause cancer in rats at high dosages it was banned as a food additive by the FDA. Thankfully, other ingredients like wintergreen, licorice, and sarsaparilla mimic that classic root beer flavor without getting you high and killing you.

Best Root Beers: Hatching the Plan

Why spend time ranking root beers? How are diamonds priceless but granite is pretty much free? Why is golf an 84 billion dollar per year industry in the USA? Because people are crazy. Relax and have a root beer. If you have read this far, you already know that root beer is the best soda that there is. If you are from the midwest you know it is the best pop there is. There are over 400 different root beers out there and I have tasted probably 100 of those over my life. However, during this pandemic I found myself driving past a place in a tiny strip mall south of Denver called the “Root Beer Bar.”

They claimed to have the world’s largest selection.  Suddenly a plan was hatched. 

Some people spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours educating themselves on all the kinds of rotten grape juice out there and then they call themselves sophisticated. Surely, I could spend less than 50 bucks and hold the ultimate root beer head to head throw down. It would give my boys some excitement during this pandemic. More importantly it would answer a question that me and my brother have been asking since we were 8 years old sipping root beers on the dock. What is the best root beer in the whole world?!?!

How To Rank The World’s Best Root Beers

Over a couple of months I started building my root beer cellar. The biggest challenge was not finding more root beers. It was trying to stop my boys from prematurely raiding the stash since I normally only give them sparkling water. Finally, I relented and we held the ultimate head to head root beer ranking of all time…among all the root beer that I could find within a couple months 😉

I lined up the caramel glass bottles and gave everyone a pen and paper for this blind taste test.  I instructed our judges to rank based on flavor, proper sweetness level, and proper carbonation.  We even went back and each re-tasted our top few root beers to prevent bias from the order of tasting.  I told the boys to pretend they were judges on a cooking show and make comments.  And the winners were…..

Best Rated Root Beer:

Triple X Root beer aka Triple X X X Root beer. This stuff is packed with flavor, has the perfect fizzy pop, and is perfectly sweetened. Apparently there used to be over 100 XXX thirst stations in the US and Canada selling drive up food and this root beer. The owner of one of the last surviving XXX locations bought this brand and is committed to protecting the flavor of the original recipe

Mr Maze’s Favorite Root Beer:

Bedfords Root Beer. This one ranked well overall but because it was my favorite and I run the show it gets special mention. A subtle note of cherry mingles with complex woody essences and root hehe. Apparently Ed Bedford started this company out of the tiny town of Port Angeles, Washington. I have been there a few times and drove through Port Angeles on my $150 Trip to the Rain Forest. Had I known then, I would have stopped in for a frosty mug.

Best Root Beers: Other Honorable Mentions

Mason’s and Dad’s. It turns out that the same company owns both these brands and decided to market Dad’s more widely than Masons. Both root beers originally came out of Chicago in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

Best Value Root Beer:

Big K. Yeah it’s k-mart soda from the company that has been going out of business since I was a kid. It also ranked pretty solidly for costing less than $1 for a 2 liter. You know I love value.

Worst Root Beer Tasted:

Avery’s Root Beer. Seriously Avery was this just a bad batch or what? It tasted like sweetened cardboard.

Best Root Beers: The Data

What you want data?  No problem.  My oldest ran the numbers and my youngest checked the math:

Best Root Beers, The Definitive List?

Barq’s wasn’t included because real root beers don’t have caffeine added to them. I’m talking to you Coca-Cola. You may be asking, why wasn’t IBC or 1919 included? What about my childhood favorite Killebrew root beer? Hey look, the longer you wait trying to find every root beer the more you risk the oldest ones going bad. Life is too short to waste good root beer or search for absolutes when you could be drinking a tasty root beer float on the dock while watching a sunset or watching your kids laugh as they rank root beers acting like a soda pop Gordon Ramsey.

What do you think of my ranking?  If you have a favorite root beer let me know in the comments because I’d love to try it.  Bonus points if you can add your own head to head ranking list and we can get meta on this ultimate root beer question 🙂

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