This is probably the most anticipated root beer I’ve ever drank. Ever since I began reviewing root beers in 1998, people would always ask what I thought of Barq’s. It is the main root beer pushed by Coca-Cola and is sold in McDonald’s restaurants, so everyone knows it. The problem though is that I only review glass bottle root beers and I could never find Barq’s in glass. I searched everywhere, throughout Washington State and all up the West Coast. I even scoured the internet, but alas, it was to no avail. I’d always have to shamefully admit that I’d never tried Barq’s, well at least not since I became The Root Beer Gourmet. I still kept up the search over the years, though I had mostly given it up as a lost cause. Then, a few months ago, I tried again. I searched and stumbled across an old discussion board where someone mentioned a market in New Orleans from which Barq’s in glass bottles could be obtained. I pounced. I quickly called the market where they confirmed that they carried Barq’s in glass bottles. I was overjoyed. At long last, it would be mine. “How much to ship it?” I asked. The reply caught me off guard, they wouldn’t ship it. No matter what I offered, the employee then hung up the phone. What? I wasn’t about to be thwarted so easily. But how. My options were few. Fly to New Orleans (I’ve never gone to such extremes for a root beer but maybe), wait until my travels take me to New Orleans (sooner or later I’ll go everywhere), wait until I have a friend go to New Orleans, or find someone there. Then I remembered, wasn’t my Grandmother born in New Orleans? Don’t I have relatives living there? As an aside, this grandmother was of French descent and I had visited France and the region from whence they came. I saw the house that the family lived in for generations and I even met the decedents of the family that stayed in France so this type of family history is rather important to me, it’s my heritage after all. Well that settled it. I was going to close the missing link in the Constantin (the French relatives) heritage of mine and get my Barq’s in the process. I called my dad who directed me to my aunt who put me in contact with my second cousin whom I’d never met, nor even really heard of growing up, named Cynthia. After several wonderfully informative calls about the family over there, she said she would drop by the store and send me a six pack. After what seemed an eternity, but was more like three weeks it finally arrived. One of the bottles was smashed in shipping but the other five were still in pristine condition. They’re pretty sweet looking bottles at that. They’ve got the same vintage style that they did 50 years ago, maybe even older. I bumped it to nearly the front of the root beer queue and finally, after 13 years of searching, was able to try Barq’s. So thank you Cynthia, you’re the greatest cousin anyone could ask for.
The Body is sweet with a very noticeable cola flavor accented by wintergreen, vanilla, and traces of more traditional root beer flavors. It is very different from most root beers I’ve tried. The Bite, for all of the old advertizing “What do you mean Barq’s has bite,” is actually pretty mild. There is a little spice hint and some carbonation tingle. However, the giant caveat with that comes from the fact that the Head is huge but not very frothy. It fizzes down very quickly but before it does it almost escapes the glass. They pack an awful lot of carbonation in it which would give it quite a harsh Bite if it weren’t poured, or at least poured more carefully than I do to evaluate the Head. The Aftertaste is vanilla with a dash of cola.
It is definitely different from the average root beer. I actually like it. It is very cola-ish which I would normally say would merit it a rather low rating for being too far out in the root beer spectrum. But, Barq’s is almost as old as Hires (still searching for that one in glass by the way), and older than classics like A&W and Dad’s, so I can hardly say that they don’t know what root beer should be like. However, it really doesn’t have anything to make it some great spectacular root beer other than the cola flavor, which I’ve already said isn’t normally a good thing. I think that I would certainly enjoy this with a burger and fries and if McDonald’s started serving it in glass bottles, I would drop by and get some (since I’m only a root beer connoisseur, not a burger one). See how it rates against other root beers.
I discovered this brew when the Capos-Capone Pasta Sauce ‘liked’ my page on Facebook. I looked at who they were and discovered that they made this root beer. But wait, why would they ‘like’ me if I hadn’t even tried their product? So I shot them an email, apologizing profusely for not having tried their esteemed brew and asking them how I could acquire it (you don’t want to anger Mr. Capone’s ‘family’ after all). They were very understanding and offered to send me some to review. Maybe they were a little too friendly. Great, now I’ve given them my address, I hope they weren’t mad about my ignorance of the Capone Family Secret, I mean, it was a secret after all. But a few days later, instead of receiving a hail of 0.45 calibers delivered from a Tommy gun and a quickly passing 1928 Cadillac Town Sedan, or a pair of cement shoes and a new apartment at the bottom of Lake Washington, I received two bottles of root beer each in it’s own burlap sack. That’s pretty cool. I’ve never gotten root beer shipped like that before. I would expect nothing less from the Family. It says on the bottle that this is soda was the only thing ever found in Al Capone’s warehouses during the many times they were raided (along with pasta sauces it seems). So how did Mr. Capone like his root beer?
My $100 review. What, you say? I spent $100 to drink two bottles of this root beer? No, I didn’t. But, I found out that since I had bought it and before I got around to drinking it (I have a rather large queue you see) it got discontinued. The only store that still had any had decided that since there was almost nothing left the price per bottle should be $50. Supply and demand they say. Fair enough on the supply side, but where is the demand? I don’t know if anyone would pay $50 to try one bottle of root beer except for maybe someone like me, who was intent to try all of the root beers (I know, there are already ones I’ve missed). But, I already had my two bottles at that point so I didn’t need any more to accurately review. I’m not sure about other reviewers. I’m also not sure if I would pay $50 per bottle if I didn’t have them yet, but I really only paid about $4 so I don’t have to make up my mind about that yet. Then again, maybe it is so amazing good that I would spent hundreds to buy up the last bottles.
