Review: Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer
May 24th, 2010 by Steve
Like the previously-reviewed Trader Joe's Vintage Cola, Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer is also a branded, cane sugar-sweetened beverage from specialty grocery chain Trader Joe's. Packaged in a classy 12 oz. glass bottle and attractive graphics, let's see how it stacks up!
Vintage Root Beer follows the nice packaging design found on Vintage Cola, this time with brown/white/orange scheme. A collegiate font is used to spell "Vintage" under the Trader Joe's logo, but is dwarfed by a bold "Root Beer" name in the center of what reflects a bottle cap-type logo. Bubbles and period-specific diamond shapes sit in the background on the label, enforcing the classic treatment of the brand.
The label also notes that this drink is "vegan" and that there are "no gluten ingredients used". Other proclamations include "caffeine free", "no artificial flavors", and "no preservatives".
Pop the cap (which actually is a vintage cap that twists off) and you are greeted with a subtle root beer aroma. There's another smell in there that decidedly is not root beer, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something almost plastic-y in nature. Not pleasant.
Luckily, the taste is better than the smell. You'll be shocked to know that this drink tastes like root beer. (I know, aren't you glad you read this review?) It's not a strong flavor and in some ways the flavor is a bit watered down. That was disappointing. There's very little bitterness or spice flavor here, so if you are a root beer connoisseur, you are probably going to be left wanting more. However, the cane sugar sweetening does provide quite a clean experience, and for what is basically a store brand, it's not bad.
Here's what's inside:
Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer
Triple filtered carbonated water, cane sugar, caramel color, wintergreen birch, anise, sassafras, Tahitian vanilla extract and citric acid and tartaric acid
A 12 oz. glass bottle packs 170 calories and 43 grams of carbs (all of which are sugars).
I wish Trader Joe's Vintage Root Beer "went farther" with its flavor. When you have cane sugar on your side, why not totally be awesome? Instead, this is a passively-flavored root beer drink, despite having an ingredient list with recognizable items! Clean, but uneventful… and actually, a bit weak in overall flavor.
The label makes me think of a root beer float!
If I lived near a Trader Joe's I might try it, but I don't think I'll go out of my way searching for a watered down root beer. Thanks for the review.
I think I'll try the root beer….I wish I had grabbed that one rather than the vintage cola! (Not a big fan of the cola)
If I lived near a Trader Joe's I might try it, but I don't think I'll go out of my way searching for a watered down root beer. Thanks for the review.
I actually find this root beer to be very nice. It makes me think of going to an A&W drive in and getting a frosty mug.
The spice is subtle but present. I drank some without checking the ingredients first, and tasted… "something" that I liked. After I checked the list, I realized it was the anise. I don't feel like it's watered down.
There are better root beers, certainly, but for a store brand, this is really good, even if the store is the slightly more upscale than your standard grocery Trader Joe's.
I think I'll try the root beer….I wish I had grabbed that one rather than the vintage cola! (Not a big fan of the cola)
It's not my favorite root beer in the world by any means, but on the other hand I think they've accomplished something with this brew. Whenever I try out a root beer that has what was referred to above as "recognizable ingredients," what I got was something that I could _learn_ to love but did not immediately like. Anise, sassafras, birch bark, all those kinds of things–they tend to give off powerful, medicinal tastes that, for all that they may hearken to root beer's origins, nevertheless are _understandably_ offputting to many.
Not so with TJ's root beer. It's made of "recognizable ingredients" like the ones I just listed–yet the flavor is really nice. This could be a minus to big root beer fans. After all, can something really have an "inoffensive" flavor without simply pandering to crude tastes? But it's an interesting accomplishment, nevertheless, to have come up with a _real_ root beer (i.e., using "recognizable ingredients") that's nevertheless unironically enjoyable to the untrained tongue shaped by megaproducts like A&W and Barqs.
Damning with faint praise? Well, to be clear–it's not my favorite, but I really do like it.
I have been "reviewing" root beer for about 5 or so years, and could never find the Trader Joe's root beer I'd constantly seen referred to on the internet. They'd always claim it was in stores, especially here (Arizona) and yet it never was in any of the 3 or 4 stores I checked. They finally came out with this "vintage" line, and that's when it finally showed up in those stores. Well, sad to say, it wasn't worth waiting for. I'm guessing this probably isn't different from their previous store brand.
It's okay, but it certainly doesn't warrant being bottled. There's a slight chemical taste to it, that probably is wintergreen. I've noticed that most of the bottled stuff is ruined by using wintergreen in the wrong proportions. It gives a lot of them a weird taste, that probably isn't actually "chemicals" at all.
It's very weak and slightly off-flavored. I'd be interested in trying the cola version, because a lot of companies screw that up, too.
Just tried this for the first time. It's enjoyable, I would like to point out that making root beer is a difficult task. I give trader joes and especially their source a big thank you for taking the time to make the closest thing to real, minus actually being brewed, root beer. It has all the classic ingredients, all natural, real bark people…it's hard to create a consistant and fully intended flavor–u try it, I have…it's hard so I'm gonna give big thumbs up to the creators for having the passion to do this for us-and oh yea—it really tastes good! You can taste the individual flavors. People are just not used to this type of purity so they call it bad, their choice. Happy drinking!!
All of Trader Joes' items mimic a brand product. This one is exactly the same as the Hansen's Root Beer. Check the ingredients and they are exactly the same.
[...] credits: rootbeer – pasta – chocolate tin – milk chocolate – tuna – sugar Related [...]