Pickles & Dimes

Every Wednesday Jason and I hang out upstairs and enjoy “No TV Night.” We play cribbage or cards, watch the fish in the aquarium, catch up on reading (me) or napping (Jason and the cats) and just generally enjoy some downtime.

Yesterday, however, we sacrificed this activity. In the interest of science.

Last weekend, in one of my middle-of-the-night insomnia episodes, I told Jason I was thirsty for root beer. To his credit, he said, “Let’s get some tomorrow.”

And thus the Great Root Beer Experiment was born.

The next day, we went to three convenience stores to procure four brands of root beer. In the name of science, of course.

The four brands:
A&W

Barq’s

Mug

Diet Stewart’s

Note: We got all bottles, so our experiment was valid. Choosing the subjects was easy. However, the nature of our experiment came under heavy scrutiny and resulted in some healthy scientific debate.

Me: Should we do a blind taste test first?

Jason: No, let’s do two separate studies. The first will involve us seeing the label and judging each root beer on flavor, foam, carbonation, smell, etc. Then the second test will be a blind test to see if we can identify each flavor.

Me: I concur. (Because that’s what scientists say to each other rather than, “Are you ON CRACK? Our root beer data will be flawed if we do not conduct the blind test first! We will be unable to extrapolate the resulting data into any future root beer analysis!”)

Ahem. Anyway, without further ado, here are the results of our highly scientific experiment as conducted in our home laboratory:

A&W
Foam: excellent
Smell: excellent; unmistakably unique (in a good way)
Carbonation: lots of fizz
Flavor: smooth; no aftertaste

Barq’s
Foam: none to be found; a harbinger of bad things to come
Smell: black licorice, which…gag. (Jason: “Put down that it smells like Jagermeister”)
Carbonation: ultra-fizzy (a scientific term)
Flavor: Decidedly NOT root beer. More like…pure evil with a hint of sadness (for my tastebuds)

Mug
Foam: average
Smell: none, which was odd
Carbonation: average
Flavor: very smooth; good taste

Diet Stewart’s
Foam: medium
Smell: the scent of DIET
Carbonation: average
Flavor: Jason thought it had excellent flavor, while I drew my thoughts in the form of a very accurate rendering of Mr. Yuk.

Overall rankings:

Me: A&W, Mug, Barq’s, Diet Stewart’s
Jason: A&W, Diet Stewart’s, Mug, Barq’s

Test #2 judged whether or not we are label snobs. We did a blind taste test to see if we could correctly guess the brand on flavor alone.

I correctly identified the Mug and Diet Stewart’s, but thought that A&W (the one I rated the highest and liked the most) was Barq’s (the one whose taste I despised). Jason was mistaken on all three of his guesses.

Conclusion: We ARE brand snobs who can’t tell the difference between brands without the aid of colorful packaging.

Additional Conclusions: All that root beer makes me want to play this: