Rootin' Tootin' Date Night!

Last week we had our second at-home date of 2020. (If you missed it when I mentioned this before, I have a goal of incorporating several at-home dates into our year. I am confident we can have all kinds of unique fun without ever leaving home!)

We enjoyed the first date back on our monthiversary - and it was an indoor picnic. This time the theme was all about root beer! Taste testing and root beer floats!

We had our date Friday night, and it was so perfect, because we were scheduled to get some nasty weather that evening, and we didn't really want to risk being out and about if it actually arrived. We scurried home from work, put on our comfy clothes, and ate dinner at home. I had put a pork tenderloin in the slow cooker that morning before I left for work, so we had a version of this Honey Apple Pork Tenderloin...and broccoli on the side. (That would be the healthy part of the date.)

Next up? The root beer taste test.

I confess that this date was a bit harder to execute than I hoped. I wanted to get a bunch of different root beer bottles, but I only found one store in Kokomo that sells them individually, and they're closed until the end of the month. I found a variety pack on Amazon...for thirty dollars. Ummmm no. I tried to order some online from Antiqology in Huntington, but I had to have a minimum order that was more than I wanted to pay. Sigh.

So...we improvised. We had a can of A and W in our refrigerator (someone had gifted it to us and we hadn't consumed it yet), so we threw that in the mix. We purchased a four-pack and a six-pack of two craft versions we found at Meijer, and then as a joke, we bought a bottle of Meijer root beer.

The post I found that gave me the idea for this date suggested doing a blind taste test, with each sample of root beer poured out into an unlabeled mason jar and consumed. Since we didn't have anyone here to pour for us, we knew what we were drinking each time we sampled. But it was still fun!

We had a taste-test survey (from the post mentioned above) and we labeled our purchases 1, 2, 3, and 4. We poured a little of each one into a jar and sampled away!

We tried the A and W first, and what I learned from this experience is that I'm a classic root beer lover. That one ended up being my favorite! On our survey, Ryan gave this one a 3 for flavor and a 3 for fizz. I gave it a 5 for flavor and a 3 for fizz. (It was my highest scoring root beer of the night and Ryan's 3rd highest scoring.)

Just for fun, I looked up the history on A and W, and while their website seemed rather unhelpful, I found some factoids on Wikipedia. It said the drink was founded in 1919 by Roy W. Allen who ended up partnering with Frank Wright in 1922. They combined their initials to create the brand and that inspired a restaurant chain by the same name. Hopefully this wasn't an original can - 101 years old!

We moved on to our first craft root beer of the night: Virgil's Root Beer. Ryan gave this one a 5 for flavor and a 2 for fizz, for a total of 7 points and second place in his overall list. I gave it a 4 for flavor and a 2 for fizz, for 6 total points and third place in my overall list. I will say that both of us thought it tasted more like root beer mixed with Coke. The flavor was good, but it didn't have an overwhelming root beer flavor to us. In fact, I told him if you had handed it to me blindly and hadn't told me it WAS root beer, I don't know that I would have guessed it.

I had never heard of this brand before, so I looked it up. According to their website, "Virgil's is all-natural. We don't use any preservatives, any artificial colors, or any GMO-sourced ingredients. Great taste without the chemicals." It also said this root beer had fifteen different all-natural roots and spices.

I did like it, for sure, but because it didn't knock me over as a root beer, it didn't win my highest vote.

We went on to our third sample, which was another craft root beer: Henry Weinhard's root beer. Ryan really liked the flavor, giving it the maximum 5 points, and it had a TON of fizz, so he gave it 5 for that as well. It came in at 10 points and his best score. I did not like the flavor of it at all. I gave it a 2 for flavor (generous, actually) and a 5 for fizz, because the fizz was off the charts amazing. It came in at 7 points total for me, which was way higher than how I felt about it.

Neither Ryan nor I drink any alcohol, so I don't know what beer tastes like, but I do know what it smells like, and this tasted way too much like the beer smell for me. I was completely turned off by it.

I tried to look up some info on their website, but you have to submit your birthdate on the site - it said to cater to their beer-drinking customers. I found that completely unnecessary and refused to submit my birthdate, so if you want to know more about them, you can send them your birthdate and learn!

Our final root beer of the night was kind of a joke that ended up not being funny. When we were shopping for our samples, Ryan showed up at the cart with a bottle of Meijer brand root beer. We laughed, and then decided it might be fun to actually try it. Wouldn't it be funny if it ended up winning the whole night? The off-brand root beer?

The joke was on us!

It was AWFUL! Completely flat - no fizz at all! And the flavor was terrible. We both gave it a 1 for flavor and fizz, giving it an extremely generous overall score of two...and last place on both our lists. Perhaps we just got a bad bottle, but if not, it wasn't a great experience!

We really did have fun sampling and talking over our likes and dislikes with each one.

And to end the night? We poured our personal winners over ice cream and enjoyed root beer floats for dessert!

It was such a fun date! It would have been fun to have a few more options - but I thought we did pretty well with what we had access to in our town - and without breaking the bank!

(This would also be a fun whole-family date if you have kids, or it could be a fun group game.)

Oh! And if you are in need of a root beer fix, just come on over! We have plenty of extra!