I like root beer and ginger ale.
Important note: No cookies, please.
Brands I recall from when root beer was popular:
A&W
Hires
Dads Old Fashioned
And I recall a root beer drive-in, “Dog 'n Suds”
Dog & Suds had the best dogs!
The one I frequented certainly had the best car hops.
I wasn’t aware they had car hops. I just thought the food appeared on my window!
Car hops? Were they put into a craft beer?
Johnny, my guess is sometimes they came after the beer(s)
Most drive-ins back then did. And Glen Ellyn had the best.
A&W root beer back in the 60’s was something we can no longer experience, it was unbelievably good and a treat as a kid.
A&W in the ol’ cardboard pyramids at a drive-in? Heaven on earth.
Still a few Dog N Suds’ floating around Western Michigan, Indiana,and Illinois.
There are still a few places where you can get A&W on draft. I think there is one on Route 30 between Everett and Bedford, PA., and there is an A&W location in Tallmadge, Ohio, that still has car hops. I think there may still be some B&K’s, too. my favorites were always A&W (draft), B&K, and Frostie. As for Ginger Ale, there’s nothing quite like a Vernor’s. I was able to get it locally until recently, but it looks like the distributor has stopped distributing it. That’s what can happen to excellent products if the people in charge don’t understand its quality and don’t promote it.
We are fortunate enough to have our original Dog & Suds here in Lafayette, Indiana. Root beer is still good, floats are the best! Just don’t think about the calories. Vernors is always available at Meijers, sometimes at Target and I have seen it a few times at Walmart. I have to agree it is the best ginger ale.
PR
Stewarts Root Beer here…
In Waukesha, WI, not far from the Kalmbach offices, is John’s Root Beer. I think it may have been an A&W at one time. They still make the root beer in the basement every day. I lived 2 blocks from it, never went there…
It is also close to the Soo-CNW Belt Line around the east side of Waukesha, which has been since removed and mostly redeveloped.
Most of those brands are still available.
A&W has probably succumbed to the HFCS devil. It can still be found, though. And I do remember the quart “megaphones.”
Vernor’s Ginger Ale is good stuff, but I don’t think it’s got the kick it had when I was a kid.
Some regional breweries are turning out credible root beers as well. I had some at a local microbrewery, though, that had an “edge” to it - like drinking rock candy. Not all that good.
This is July, by itself a time machine.
A railroad forum about sweet, herb flavored carbonated beverages and Dog’s. Let’s go, Run 8…
Dogs…Nathan’s Famous, also lived in my hometown of Oceanside…besides Coney Island.
Beverages…, my mother, from the Far Northwest, loved Birch Beer, hard to find on Long Island in the '40s and '50s. The Far Northwest: of NY state: Buffalo
And root beverages…Gabby Hayes sat down at many a grade B western’ movie’s saloon’s bar and ordered i’n his nearly perfect old guy, western (movie) accent, “a Sasparilly.”’
I, on suburban Long Island, drank some Hoffman’s. Good. Spelled sarsa parila?
What was or is it, besides carbonated water?
What’s a B&K? I used to like a Black Cow (root beer float with ice cream). Vernor’s is good.
B&K was a small competitor of A&W back in the 1960’s, with carhops and all. There was one in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio on the road to Munroe Falls (about a block from CSX’s ex-B&O mainline), and it was still there, operating, as of last summer. Still had carhop service, and the root beer was still good. Probably still in business now. On my first trip by car from Ohio to Chicago around 1962, I saw one in Michigan or Indiana. I have no idea how big they were. There could have been a lot in places I never visited, but I don’t know.
Must be a regional thing. When I was a kid, we had brown cows- Coke float with vanilla ice cream. We’ve always called a root beer float simply a root beer float.