Barq's Root Beer review

Our friends up north, American Soda based near Manchester kindly contacted me to offer a couple of root beer samples. As well as Dad's root beer I was also offered this Barq's root beer.

American Soda offer a great range of USA goods from sweets, chocolate, soft drinks, baking goods and even washing powder (?). There's even some Harry Potter merchandise.

For root beer American Soda has a generous handful of canned and bottled drinks:

• A & W (in regular and diet and also available in 2 litres)
• Barq's
• Dad's
• Mug (in regular and diet)
• IBC (in regular and diet)
• Sioux City
• Stewarts (in regular and diet)
• Days

On the can it says there's 160 calories which I thought at the time sounded reasonable. However, compared to Coke it wasn't that much different. Still the marketing gimmick worked. Whilst we're talking business here it worth mentioning that Barq's is part of the Coca Cola group so it's mass-produced and therefore cheaper than the gourmet root beers I would normally go for.

The actual taste surprised me despite all the high fructose corn syrup. It's a standard root beer taste with enough depth and plenty of fizz (if you like seeing a head to your drink). Tried the second free can I received with a vodka based root beer float and it worked like a charm. There was an odd after-taste right at the end of the gulp but for some reason my taste buds weren't quick enough to recognize it. Strange and it didn't put me off.

Since Barq's is a mass-produced root beer like A&W there's not much difference between the two, hence the score being the same. They both taste good and are priced at £1.29 from the American Soda online shop. I can only suggest you buy both and take the taste test.

7/10

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