Root Beer Review #8 – Mug Old Fashioned Root Beer

Mug Root Beer is Pepsi, Co.’s offering to the root beer choices. I remember drinking this root beer by the liter as a growing boy. It was the second drink of choice in my youth – the first choice was obviously Welch’s Grape Soda.

I’ll be honest. I didn’t want to like this root beer. It’s the root beer of my youth, and I feel like my taste buds should have evolved since then. It would be a big travesty if the highest ranking root beer was in every grocery store. That’s like saying Budweiser makes the best beer and Franzia makes the best wine.

I had my first recent taste of Mug Root Beer and I liked it. I thought to myself, “if this was a blind taste test, it might be something I’d buy”. There wasn’t anything special about the taste, but it wasn’t off-putting. A little syrupy and had some good bubbliciousness at the end. This would be my go-to burping root beer. I drank and sipped, trying to decide on a rating.  And then I was transported back to my youth with a familiar Mug Root Beer stomach ache. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of the volume of root beer drank.

I have to give Mug Root Beer a low rating – if I’m going to want to buy a root beer, I don’t want a stomach ache. I would buy black jelly beans if I wanted that feeling. But, if it’s the only root beer available, I might go for it. It tastes fine, but the repercussions are undesirable.

Derek’s Rating: 2.5

Here are the rankings so far:

9.1 River City Root Beer
9.0 Americana Root Beer
8.1 maine root handcrafted rootbeer
8.0 Virgil’s Root Beer
7.7 Chicago Root Beer
7.2 O-So Butterscotch Root Beer
3.6 towne club root beer
2.3 Mug Old Fashioned Root Beer