Iron Beer

The Pooj stretches in preparation to pumping some iron.

(Porto’s Bakery & Cafe, January 2011)

First things first: Iron Beer does not make any claims to being root beer – it only advertises itself as the official soft drink of Cuba. Any assertion of Iron Beer’s root beer credentials comes solely from the description given to me by the nice lady working at the counter at Porto’s Bakery & Café (home of Cuban sandwiches and pastries like their legendary cheese rolls), who told me it’s “kind of like root beer.” So is Iron Beer the official Cuban root beer?

Not really. Iron Beer kind of tastes like three parts Cactus Cooler, mixed with two parts Coca-Cola (mostly for color, since it’s dark like cola and root beer), mixed with one part Sangria Senorial (non-alcoholic Mexican sangria soda). That actually makes we wonder if I can recreate it using said sodas in said proportions. But that’s not why we’re here; we’re here to talk about the relative root beer value of various soft drinks that claim to be root beer or that one might think to be root beer. By that rationale, Iron Beer is not root beer, so it gets a 2.