Thanksgiving Root Beer Spectacular! Part 1: Stewart's

My in-laws spoil me – they really do. Not only did they let me marry the most wonderful woman in the world, but this past Thanksgiving, they hosted us for a week at their home-away-from-home in Mansfield, Ohio, inclusive of a full Thanksgiving spread, chasing horses and chickens on the family farm, wandering around the old rust-belt parts of town, a second wedding reception for the family members I had yet to meet, and, most pertinent to this blog, multiple different kinds of root beer. The missus’ mom actually already had a stash (two kinds) waiting for us in the fridge when we got there, and the missus’ dad and I discovered another variety as we were traipsing about town – add that to the unidentified one I had in a local diner and we have no less than four different root beers accounted for during our stay.

Without further ado then…

The Pooj takes in the Mansfield scenery.

(Kroger or Meijer, Mansfield OH; November 2010)

I was excited to discover that Stewart’s Beverages, now a staple at most supermarkets in California, started in 1924 as a root beer stand in Mansfield. Unfortunately, Frank Stewart’s original root beer stand no longer stands, and the only remaining Stewart’s Drive-In location in Mansfield has been occupied by a different restaurant for years. Nevertheless, I had made a point of having a Stewart’s Root Beer in their hometown, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that my in-laws already had some waiting for us when we arrived – thus my first root beer of the weekend was the “local” brew.

And the local brew is a pretty decent one. The herb-to-sweet balance of flavors leans heavily towards the sweet side, so any rooty-ness from the acacia, yucca extract, and “natural and artificial flavor” is fairly subdued, perhaps a little more pronounced in the aftertaste. Quillaia extract is also present, probably as a foaming agent (which might be what the yucca extract is for, too), which may account for the hard carbonation (it’s not particularly foamy for a draft-style root beer though).

It's too bad there wasn’t still a Stewart’s Drive-In in town we could have visited – I’d be willing to bet that root beer there would have been much better than the bottled variety. The bottling of Stewart’s Root Beer is handled by a different company, and the economies of scale in these kinds of transactions tend to dull the original product’s glory a bit. Although the bottled Stewart’s is good, it’s still pretty average; I give it a 3.