For quite a while I thought "root beer" to be a fictitious beverage, like Romulan Ale or Bloodwine.
Until I stumbled upon some comments by Americans mentioning it to be a real thing!
Only problem was that it is basically unknown and very hard to find here in Germany.
After unsuccessfully trying two special US stores as well as a couple of Asia markets (after someone mentioned that it is also a thing in some Asian countries) I basically gave up.
So imagine my excitement when accidentally coming upon this can in my local Edeka market (a type of German higher end grocery store)!
Now I and my kids are ready to try it, but this should naturally be with the right background.
So: Which Star Trek episode that references it should we watch while tasting it?
We are currently watching TNG, so this would be preferred (if it even appears in there?).
I would even be ok with a Wesley centered episode.. ;-)
Update:
First, thanks to you all for the suggestions! In the end we went with DS9's "Little green men", as other episodes would have required too much contextual knowledge (and are also much darker).
Individually perceived tastes of the Root beer varied somewhere between toothpaste and decomposed rubber.
Final verdict has been mixed:
My daughter completely hates it, my wife is not especially fond of it, I kinda like it and my son now has a new favorite soft drink :-)
You've been lied to, there is no good canned root beer I'm aware of, afaik all the good stuff is bottled in glass (not that it has to be,) but more importantly contains Pure Cane Sugar instead of High Fructose Corn Syrup (and for some reason they bottle that instead of canning).
It still has the sassafras flavor to it (because that is what the "root" of the "beer" is, despite sassafras oil being outlawed in the 60s so idk how they do it now), but the HFCS just sucks.
Well... It's Europe, so I doubt it's using high fructose corn syrup around here. Also, sugar itself is just one glucose and one fructose molecule glued together, which splits apart by itself if the environment's acidity is high enough, so I doubt that is a major contributing factor to flavour.
I did buy one pretty expensive root beer from the Candy Megastore on Nordre Fasanvej that was in a glass bottle, but it was identical to A&W. So I dunno.
I've been trying to find a root beer in Copenhagen that's called "Barq", which Danes say tastes better than A&W, but I've had no luck finding it...
That's why I'm not sure, if it were a US can I'd bet $10 on it just based on
A) It being in a can
B) It doesn't say "made with pure cane sugar" on the front.
But in Europe they may not have to, idk! I tried looking up the ingredients online but it was inconclusive. I hope everything there is real sugar I just don't know.
But I'll push back on it not affecting flavor, it very much so does, trust me as someone in HFCSland. I've taste tested normal coke and cane sugar coke in my house with some friends and we could all tell the difference.
Barq's is just a coke product, A&W is pepsi. Neither are really good, both HFCS, idk I guess if I have to pick one it would be barq's but really it's all about IBC, Boylan, or Virgil's.