Saranac prominently displays the number 1888 on their label. Over one hundred and twenty five years of business. That’s a long time. Their website listing says: “Our hand-crafted Saranac Root Beer is made in small batches in our own hometown Brewery. The flavor will take you to the fresh root beer taste from days-gone-by. We make our Saranac Root Beer with the best of ingredients – look for the fresh vanilla and licorice notes. Saranac Root Beer has the trademark rich, creamy head that only a real Brewery Root Beer can achieve.”
They also sell regular beer, ginger beer, orange cream, black cherry cream and Shirley Temple. Yes, Shirley Temple already in a bottle. That is cray cray.
This root beer has been sitting in the fridge waiting to rotate to the front. I love cracking off the bottle cap and seeing the swirling wisps of carbonation. Otherwise, this root beer was less than intriguing. It did have the correct bubbliness, not overly tingling but still carbonated. I do like licorice root beers, but they get tiring. This is just another soda in the licorice root beer queue. I expected big things from this brewery based on the Sprecher success, but it didn’t stand out. This root beer was just barely above average.
Derek’s Rating: 5.1
Here are the rankings so far:
9.5 Sprecher Root Beer
9.1 River City Root Beer
9.0 Americana Root Beer
8.8 Tower Root Beer
8.1 maine root handcrafted rootbeer
8.0 Virgil’s Root Beer
7.7 Chicago Root Beer
7.4 Bulldog Root Beer
7.2 O-So Butterscotch Root Beer
6.8 J.J. Stewart Root Beer
5.9 Red Arrow Root Beer
5.1 Saranac Root Beer
4.3 Triple “AAA” Root Beer
3.6 towne club root beer
3.4 Dad’s Old Fashioned Root Beer
2.5 Mug Old Fashioned Root Beer
0.1 GuS Dry Root Beer