Dang! That's Good Butterscotch Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Sugar, Natural and Artificial Flavors, Caramel Color, Citric Acid, and Sodium Benzoate (Preserves Freshness)

Smell: Butterscotch, straight up. Hits you pretty hard too. I mean, I don't know what I expected but yeah. Butterscotch.

Head: Pretty awesome! Fills a good portion of the drink, and lasts a good long time.

Flavor: Again, Butterscotch. You could almost call this a Root Beer flavored Butterscotch drink. The bites okay, and the aftertaste is heaven (assuming you like Butterscotch).

Overall: Totally unique. I expected this to be more like normal Root Beers, where maybe I'd catch a strong hint of Butterscotch in the back ground. But I should know better than that, as with most Root Beers I've had that advertise as a flavored Root Beer, the flavor is almost always stronger than the Root Beer. Still, I enjoyed this, maybe a little too sweet in the end, I almost had that feeling of eating too much candy! B, above average for sure.

Purchased from D'Marie's Deli

Capt'n Eli's Root Beer

Ingredients: Water, Cane Sugar, Caramel Coloring, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Including Wintergreen Oil, Anise, Vanilla, Spices, Herbs, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate as a Preservative

Smell: Mostly sweet and sassafras but there's certainly a strong smell of anise too.

Head: Pretty awesome. Nice and tall, in fact it surprised me so much, it sort of overflowed out as you can see. Shrinks down but still lasted the entire drink.

Flavor: In an odd way, the flavors that are normally more hidden are high on display here. Anise and vanilla don't quite overshadow the sassafras flavor, but they are quite strong. The bite is fine, and the aftertaste is the anise and vanilla for sure.

Overall: I've never had a drink where I've been torn between giving it a D or a B. Let me explain, this is certainly not an average either way. But it's a real fight between two flavors I have opposing taste for. I guess in the end I'll give it a B, because I didn't not like this one even though the anise was strong. But the flavor of vanilla was nice and strong as well, and the actual Root Beer flavor was enjoyable as well. So yeah, a B.

Purchased at D'Marie's Deli (Super awesome sandwich shop in Mokena.)

Route Beer 66 Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Real Cane Sugar, Caramel Color, Natural and Artificial Flavorings, Quillaia, Citric Acid, Sodium Benzoate (preservative)

Smell: A fairly sweet smell, not as sweet as other Root Beers, no real hints of anything.

Head: Starts out pretty tall, and just goes away instantly, and you can tell in the picture above.

Flavor: Good sweet flavor, all those normal flavors most people expect from Root Beer, but nothing hidden. But still good stuff. Bite is a good kind of harsh, and the aftertaste is nice and sweet.

Overall: Actually found this brand at a gas station down the street from me, so it's a nice surprise. This is as average as average gets. Good for sure, but nothing really special. C.

Purchased from Route 66 Food & Fuel

Zuberfizz Root Beer

Ingredients: Triple Filtered Carbonated Water, Pure Cane Sugar, Natural & Artificial Flavors, Caramel Color, Gum Arabic, Phosphoric Acid and Sodium Benzoate

Smell: Average sweet smell, with a little bit of licorice.

Head: Short and does not last very long, I took two pictures, and it was basically gone by the second photo.

Flavor: Pretty normal stuff here, sweet sassafras flavor with a hint of anise. Bite's okay, and not much of an aftertaste other than just the normal Root Beer flavor.

Overall: Strangely enough I had high hopes for this, and it's almost completely based off the bottle. I mean, look at it. Words like "Zuberfizz" and "Creamy" really kind was selling it for me. What I ended up getting was something good, but just absolutely average. C.

Purchased from Sweet Street

Frostie Vanilla Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Pure Cane Sugar, Caramel Color, Sodium Benzoate (A Preservative), Citric Acid, Natural and Artificial Flavors

Smell: Holy cow, this had almost as strong of a vanilla smell as a sweet bottle of cream soda. This is the second time a Root Beer has made me say "Wow!"

Head: Same as the normal Frostie Root Beer. Nothing great. Short in both height and length.

Flavor: I really expected this to be too vanilla, but it really strikes an interesting balance. It's almost like the vanilla is the main flavor with the Root Beer as the background flavor. The bite was okay, but the aftertaste is glorious.

Overall: I really liked it, but some may not. However, I REALLY like it. It's been a really good week for Root Beers. Lots of delicious honey and vanilla flavors. This one is a top dog in my book. A

Purchased from Alsip Home & Nursery

Frostie Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Pure Cane Sugar, Caramel Color, Sodium Benzoate (A Preservative), Citric Acid, Natural and Artificial Flavors

Smell: Yummy sweet familiar scent.

Head: Nothing great here, short and gone pretty quickly.

Flavor: Nice sweet flavor, just like the smell. The bite is tame but good, and it goes down very smooth. The aftertaste is mostly Root Beer, but there's a lingering flavor of vanilla.

Overall: Very good one here. It doesn't quite blow my mind or anything, but it's certainly on the higher end when it comes to the flavors I really enjoy. I also really liked the smoothness of it, and that hint of vanilla really puts it over for me. Solid B.

Purchased from Alsip Home & Nursery

Cicero Beverage Co. Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, Sugar, Caramel Color, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Natural Flavor, and Citric Acid

Smell: Right away you're just hit with a strong vanilla flavor that almost had me licking my lips.

Head: It's pretty standard from what you can see there, but I took three pictures of it, and by the third picture it was nearly gone. In other words, not the greatest.

Flavor: If you like vanilla flavor in your Root Beer, this may be one of the tops for you. In fact the taste of vanilla was so strong I almost questioned if maybe they'd somehow switched with a Cream Soda or something. But no, this is definitely a Root Beer, because those sassafras flavors were certainly in there. The bite was good, the drink went down smooth, and has a delicious vanilla aftertaste.

Overall: At this point, you know my taste, and you probably know what I'm going to give this. If I was to say anything negative about this one is that one might find it to be too sweet or too vanilla. However I think there's no such thing for both of those. A

Purchased from Sweet Street

Roundy's Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cane Sugar, Caramel Color, Natural and Artificial Flavor, Citric Acid, Yucca Extract, and Sodium Benzoate (A Preservative)

Smell: A good sweet sassafras smell, actually struck me as really pleasant.

Head: Pretty terrible, short and leaves almost instantly. As you can see in the pic, it was gone before I could take the picture.

Flavor: A nice sweet flavor that matched the scent. The bites a little heavy but not harsh, and the aftertaste is nice and sweet with a little vanilla.

Overall: I really was not expecting much from a store brand Root Beer, since Roundy's is just the name of the store branded items from Marianos. But it's actually very good. It really struck a good mix of bite and smoothness, and the flavors are a good mix of what I like. B

Purchased from Mariano's

IBC Root Beer

Ingredients: Carbonated Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup and/or Sugar, Caramel Color, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Artificial and Natural Flavors, Food Starch - Modified, Citric Acid

Smell: You're hit with a pretty strong anise smell along with a few other spices.

Head: The head on this one was pretty good. Not remarkably tall, but nice and long lasting.

Flavor: I've drank IBC many many times, but it had been a while. I never noticed how strong the anise flavor really is until this time. Not only that but it has a pretty harsh bite, and the aftertaste is nothing to be proud of either.

Overall: I've always called IBC "the worst of the best", as it's a nice gourmet Root Beer, but still kind of standard and nothing special. However, there are some really terrible Root Beers out there, and this isn't those. Still not a fan though. D

Purchased at Mariano's