Root Beer

For the past little while I have been obsessed with root beer. It all started when I had a Virgil's at Andrea and Damon's house. I thought, "This is the best root beer I have ever had. Hell this is the best root beer ever made!" I have begun a quest to see if this is true. During the past 2 days I sampled the following root beers...



Mason's is made in Atlanta. The listed ingredients are carbonated water, sugar, caramel color, sodium benzoate (a preservative), citric acid, natural and artificial flavors. Mason's was a bit generic and bland. It was passable, but does not stand out. It does however have a classic label, which I appreciate on an aesthetic and sentimental level.

Empire is from Bristol, RI. It is technically sarsaparilla. I asked myself is sarsaparilla the same as root beer. Through a not very extensive internet search I found that according to rootbeer.org , "Sarsaparilla (botanical Aralia nudicaulis), is almost always flavored primarily with sassafras, and the additional spice of sarsaparilla (and very few people can taste any difference between sarsaparilla and root beer made by the same company)." So the Root Beer World considers sarsaparilla to be root beer. Empire has been making root beer since 1930. Its listed ingredients are natural artisan spring water, 100% pure can sugar, natural and/or artificial extracts, citric acid and sodium benzoate (preservative). This "root beer" was very very good. The difference between Empire and Mason's must be the natural artisan spring water, seeing that the other ingredients we almost identical. Empire is still not as good as Virgil's.