The Pooj stares a hole through my computer.
Ever since I had the Diet Hansen’s Creamy Root Beer a few months back, I have been meaning to find myself some of the regular variety. Granted, I wasn’t looking very hard, seeing as it is pretty widely available (although the diet version is usually easier to find). Apparently when I slack in my search, root beer actually starts to beckon me towards it. Back-story: I have been employed at the same place of business for the past 10+ years, with little expectation that it would ever leave its non-descript home, nestled amongst houses, apartments, and other uninspired office buildings on a small hill in West Los Angeles. Just like everyone else these days, we came upon hard financial times, and as a result had to move to a new location (I use the term “new” rather loosely – it’s more “new-to-us” than “new,” per se, seeing as I’m pretty sure these digs are much older than our last ones…). Well, this new location happens to sit right across the street from a market which offers no fewer than six different varieties of root beer! See – what’d I tell you? Root beer just calls to me, even on an unconscious level.
But I digress…
Hansen’s Creamy Root Beer is actually quite pleasant. Herbs include wintergreen birch, anise, sassafras, and Tahitian vanilla, of which I would say the wintergreen birch is most prominent. All of the other ingredients play well together, so the flavor is very nice. It’s not too sweet, even though they use real sugar (some sodas tend to think that if they have real sugar in it, they don’t need to add anything else, so all you end up getting is sugar soda, not whatever the flavor is supposed to be…), and the carbonation is not too hard and not too soft, even from a can. My only gripe with it – and this is a relatively small gripe – is that while the flavor is good, it’s a little thin – something that could have been remedied with a thicker head. Still, Hansen’s is making a good argument for becoming my mass-market-ly available pantry root beer. I’ll give it a low 4.
While the Pooj isn't looking, the elephant train heads to the watering hole.
(Pilfered from the Fridge-In-Law, August 2010)
Yes, I know this wouldn’t normally count in my tally since it’s both canned and diet, but since it was a root beer, I figured I should at least keep track of it…
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was actually decently good. There’s a fairly good initial root beer flavor, which gives way to the typical weird artificial sweetener aftertaste after a few seconds. So I suppose if one were committed enough to the cause of decently good root beer to time their sips such that you get the initial flavor just as the aftertaste is arriving, this could work. But it’s kind of like being the reoccurring bad guy on a single season of Dexter – you can sort of stay one step ahead of Dex in every episode of the season (i.e., timing the sips to get the initial root beer taste of subsequent sips to cover up the aftertaste of the previous sip), but he’ll eventually catch you and kill you in the season finale (i.e., when the can is empty and you’re out of fresh sips, and the aftertaste comes for the reckoning). Or kind of like a high-speed chase on the TV “news” – you can keep driving away from the po-po, but for goodness sakes, you’ve got 4 network news helicopters following you in addition to all the squad cars and S.W.A.T. aircraft who know where you are and where you’re going, so do you really think they won’t eventually catch up with you? Or kind of like trying to dodge a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick – you think he missed you with the steel of the toe, but that boot heel’s coming back to high-five your skull in 3, 2, OW.
OK, so it’s not quite as bad as certain death, certain tasering, or certain tattoo-to-the-temple-by-Walker-Texas-Ranger, but I wouldn’t go rushing out to the store to get more right this instant. Buuuut, if I’m in a position where a diet mass-market root beer is all that’s available to me, I certainly would not thumb my nose at the free beverage, and I would gladly choose the Hansen’s Diet Root Beer over other diet sodas.
Not quite a 3, since it’s not really better than mass-market root beers and because of the whole artificial sweetener thing, but I’ll give it a very drinkable 2.5.
The Pooj stares a hole through my computer.
