People in my country complain that root beer (especially the A&W brand) smells like Tiger Balm. Can't blame them, though. It really does have an iconic scent and flavor to it.
People in my country complain that root beer (especially the A&W brand) smells like Tiger Balm. Can't blame them, though. It really does have an iconic scent and flavor to it.
Can never get enough of it, though.
A variant you might like is birch beer. I find it tends to have a crisper taste.
Wow. I know soft drink formulas vary from region to region, but I didn't know anyone was making mentholated root beer. :)
Basically all root beer is mentholated.
Menthol is a naturally occurring compound in various forms of mint, it's the compound responsible for the cooling sensation in the mouth produced by those plants. Wintergreen and Birch oil, core ingredient in genuine root beers both contain methyl salicylate an ester with the chemical menthol present which produces their vaguely mint like flavor. However this version also triggers heat receptors at the same time, and thus is also what gives these drinks much of their 'bite' or numbing sensation on the tongue.
Although "Witnergreen flavoring" that's only partly straight wintergreen oil is more common nowadays, and many of these blends also contain a certain percentage of straight menthol. By and large the higher the percentage of wintergreen oil present the "harsher" the drink. Birch oil has the exact same active compound as wintergreen oil by the way, most Birch beers are only 'stronger' then root beer because they probably include a higher percent of straight methyl salicylate in their flavoring blend.
Both of these, menthol and methyl salicylate, are also used in hot/cold pads, cough medicine, mouth wash, etc in the exact same form. The difference really is entirely cultural, people in the US are exposed to the smell and taste in a context of it being food at an early age in most cases. People in other places most often encounter it much later in life having already come to associate the smell with things like cough medicine and topical creams which is an obvious turn off.
Caroway and spearmint are stereoisomers of each other and they polarize light in opposite directions.
Another fun bit of minty chemistry is that the methyl salicylate in wintergreen is fluorescent, so hard sugar candy flavored with it will produce visible sparks when cracked by say, your teeth, since it absorbs the normally mostly UV spectrum emissions of Triboluminescence and re-emits them as visible light.
garpun said:
So Asians don't like root beer very much... But what do they think of America's national drink, Dr Pepper?
Depends on the country I know in some at least it basically doesn't exist outside of specialty shops in big cites. A online friend of mine in Malaysia had never seen a can and ironically only really knew about it via anime memes.
They had a taste testNgaaah~ Too sweet. What is this?It's a poultice, is it?I could get addicted to the sipping feel of it.That's our admiral and secretary ship. They're on the same boat.Cheers!sipHeheheHave fun~It's Kongou-san's launching day.Mm... I think I might like this.Whaaaaaat~?Root Beer
An American-made carbonated beverage with a peculiar taste
It is believed that even inside the warship "Kongou", people are making it, sort of.
