Mug - 2 Reviews

It's been some time since I've had an “everyday” root beer. That kind of hurts my head, since in the past I used to consume it by the bucket. Oh man, I wish there was a place that served root beer in buckets. You know, like those bars that serve drinks out of fish bowls or whatever weird receptacle they have. Anyway, when I've had a root beer in recent times it's been something more on the fancy side of the root.

With the first couple sips I thought to myself, “Self, I really miss this. It's simple, but it tastes great. It's a classic.” Then about halfway through the bottle I started to realize how thick the soda was, due to the HFCS sweetener. In fact I started to get in my head that the whole thing tastes like carbonated syrup. I still enjoyed it, but not with as much vigor as I had the first half. In my mind there is nothing wrong with Mug. Chances are that when you think of root beer it's more of this variety than a microbrewed one or anything fancy like that. It's a completely average root beer, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

I recently went on a road trip with Thirsty Dudes ally Andy Czuba. Just inside Vermont we stopped at a gas station where I found this. I didn't know Mug made anything besides root beer. I wasn't THAT surprised since many root beer companies also make cream soda, but it was still nice to find something new.

Unlike the road trip (which consisted of traveling 1,000+ miles through 4 states in less than 48 hours, seeing 9 bands at 2 different shows, with only 7 hours of sleep), this cream soda wasn't anything special. It had a really strong vanilla smell, but the taste was pretty generic. If they made a version with real sugar, I bet it would be a pretty good cream soda.