By the time I finished casing supermarkets, big-box retailers, food boutiques and other shops across the area, I came up with a whopping 54 non-diet root beers. This number includes house brands, but in the interest of not completely overflowing the glass, I ignored other sodas that could be included in the root beer family: birch beer, sarsaparilla and an English concoction known as dandelion and burdock. And if 54 seems like a large number, the Web site Rootbeerworld.com lists more than 2,300 distinct brands of root beer and related sodas brewed around the world.
Two of the best local selections were at Straub's markets and a place called Soda Jerks in the St. Louis Mills mall in Hazelwood. Each carries 20 or more brands, with prices generally hovering around $1 for a 12-ounce bottle. Prices for the selection as a whole ranged from 16 cents a can for Target's house brand to a special edition of Virgil's in a resealable, porcelain-capped 16.8-ounce (500ml) bottle for $4.99.
I tasted all 54 - 38 in glass bottles, three in plastic bottles and 12 in cans - broken into four flights, mixed up reasonably randomly with about the same number of bottles and the same number of cans in each flight. I spaced each of the flights two or three hours apart, and I drank each root beer from freshly washed, identical mugs. I found pretzels to be the best between-brand palate cleanser.
I rated the root beers primarily based on flavor, with lots of emphasis on distinctive (but still pleasant) combinations, complexity and balance of flavors. Secondary emphasis went to creaminess and the size and endurance of the foamy head.
When it was all over, I gave my 10 favorite root beers an A grade, then broke the rest into grades of B, C and "not recommended." Am I now burnt out on root beer? Not at all. I think I'll run down to Carl's Drive In (9033 Manchester Road in Brentwood) soon for a griddle-cooked burger and a frosted mug of their original-recipe IBC.
