The Rootbeer Chronicles

Today my family and some family friends ventured to a little Italian market in St. Pet called Mazarro's. My family's been there several times before, and I must say they have the most delectable foods you ever did see. Every time we go there I order either the classic Italian panini or the meatball, though usually it's the latter, as melted mozzarella is my weakness. They also have the largest selection of non-mainstream soft drinks I have ever found. However, the signs in front of the sodas were very conflicting: they each said that their particular soda was the best. As a gullible skeptic, I feel the need to believe these signs, but compare to see which TRULY IS the best.

So I got the Bulldog root beer, the Sprecher root beer, and the Sioux City Sarsaparilla root beer (as seen above, respectively), all of which claimed to have been the superior root beer. I tasted each and analyzed their tastes based on sweetness, flavor, and texture. However, I completely forgot about this rubric and judged them sans criteria. For flavor analysis and links to the sodas' websites, see descriptions below:

Bulldog: Ingredients- Pure cane sugar, honey, vanilla. The taste was very sweet and smooth going down, not too bubbly.
Sprecher: Ingredients- High fructose corn syrup, honey, vanilla. This one wasn't sweet at all and way, way, way too bubbly. It was borderline bitter. Interestingly enough, the New York Times rates it the #1 Root Beer. I don't know what they taste.
Sioux City Sarsaparilla: Ingredients- Pure cane sugar, honey. It was a very interesting taste, very different from the others, but in a very good way. It was just sweet enough, though with a bit too much carbonation. Overall a decent soda.
Verdict: Bulldog Root Beer was the far superior root beer. It had the great vanilla taste that gives root beer that perfect taste. Coming in second was the Sioux City Sarsaparilla. It was very good, but the lack of vanilla was disappointing and could have let to its victory. Sprecher was alright if you want more root beer for your money, but not quality. I would rather drink Barq's, A&W, or Mug than Sprecher but at least you get 4 more ounces than regular sodas.
I think the key factor that made one soda better than another was cane sugar vs. HFC syrup. The real sugar simply has a taste that is incomparable.

For links to the soda websites, see below:
Bulldog Root Beer
Sprecher
Sioux City Sarsaparilla