Hi there,

My name is Boris and I am new to the forum. Please pardon met if this is not the right forum for introductions and hellos. I have always enjoyed the taste of root beer. It is interesting to see so many people interested in the beverage. I didn't think people would get into it as much as people do with wine and beer. It's kind of nice to see.

I take my 2 year old son out every weekend and we have been frequenting a shopping center that has a Cost Plus World Market. We actually go there to visit the Petco store since it is the closest thing our small town has to a zoo. Anyways, I have been buying a 4-pack of root beer there and enjoying a bottle on the weekends. I always thought that there was only three brands of root beer: A&W, Barqs, and something generic at Walmart.

I finished trying Bulldog root beer. Wow, that was great root beer! I really enjoyed it. Next I tried Dad's Old Fashioned and I still have three bottle left. It's OK. I think it's a bit watered down in comparison to Bulldog. Once I finish those bottles then I will try Virgil's. It looks like some people like it and others don't. We'll see how it goes.

I'm always a little hesitant to try something with high fructose corn syrup. If I want something sweetened then it should be done with something a little less refined. Maybe I relate high fructose corn syrup with yucky soda and that just sours my perception of it.

-- Boris

I've been researching glass bottled beverages for about 2 1/2 years now. I have a pretty extensive list of beverages that are available in glass. I try to update it for discontinued brands, but most are still in business.

Currently my list is 1850+. 150 of which are root beers in glass bottles. I've had about 70 different kinds on hand in the past year or so. I know this site has thousands of brands listed, but it's hard to distinguished those readily available and how they sell their products and packaging.

As far as the HFCS, I find it really depends on the ingredients it's mixed with. Some products can pull off a good root beer taste without the sugar. Case in point would be Dang! That's good root beer (they also make a butterscotch root beer) i find it to be one of the better root beers I've tried.

I never thought that root beer's availability is dependent on your location. So how far do people go to get a specific brand? I imagine mail order is possible but difficult due to shipping costs. And what do you do if a shipment is damaged and root beer spills everywhere? Yikes! I guess I'll have to try that once I exhaust the local supplies in my small town here.

-- Boris

Shipping is tricky, I use UPS and just make sure I package the items extremely well. Breakage is very rare if done right.

As far as different brands in different locations, you'll find that small town bottles are limited to small batches and therefore their distribution is very small.

Everyone knows Barq's, A&W, Mug, and the few others that are in mass. but smaller bottlers such as Virgil's, Goose Island, Iron Horse and others can all be found on the 4-5 bottle resellers online.

I can be found on Ebay by searching the stores under the name Hip Hop Soda Pop Shop. Some day i may spread out and add a real website, but for now it's just something I do in my free time.

I never even thought about searching eBay for Root Beer. It turns out that there is a lot of root beer available there. I did find your eBay store too. The S&H was pretty high but gasoline is not cheap nowadays either. I saw an auction for IBC root beer. It was a buy it now for $0.69 per bottle and $12.99 S&H. So if I bought one bottle of root beer would I be paying $13.68? How much would I typically pay for additional bottles?

Why did you choose to use UPS? Can't US Postal ship liquids too?

I checked out the root beer stock at the local Raley's. They had quite a few brands but all with HFCS. I will have six bottles to go through at home so I didn't get any more. Wikipedia had some interesting stuff on HFCS and it's worth reading.

-- Boris

The shipping quoted by Ebay is always higher than the actual price. i added a note to every auction regarding this as Ebay told me 2 years ago they were coming out with a new system to help sellers like me who sell by the each, pack and/or case that allows their system to identify the difference and not offer discounts to those who purchase two cases and still allow for those purchasing bottles to get a deal.

Well, that hasn't amounted to anything, so i just ask people to email me with their zip codes for an accurate quote. The only way I could make their system work is to take the option to buy a full case off of Ebay.

typically the average shipping cost is $7-10 is purchasing by the each and goes down from there. 12 bottles can ship from anywhere bewteen $15-20 and full cases usually average $20-30. Really all depends on where you are in relevance to Minneapolis. My central location.