You Can Find This Root Beer Hiding In Hardware Stores

When you think about root beer, the most popular root beer brands at the grocery store — A&W, Barq's, Mug — probably come to mind. Sometimes you can find more obscure brands or even home-brewed root beer at restaurants or specialty stores, but one place you're probably not looking for the soda is a hardware store. However, that's exactly what you should be doing if you want to try the specialty root beer, Frostop. 

The Frostop soda brand started in Springfield, Ohio, in 1926. The company sells a variety of sodas, but is perhaps best known for its root beer. No less than 22 flavors make up the specialty recipe, which, as the company proudly declares on the official Frostop website, "we cold-brew in small batches at 36 degrees — the exact temperature that brings out Frostop's rich, delicious, and creamy flavor."  

You can find this root beer at one of the few remaining Frostop drive-ins, located mostly in Louisiana, or at your local hardware store. Ace Hardware sells bottles of the root beer, as do similar chains like Rural King and Do It Best, so you can pick up a fresh soda to enjoy while working on your next DIY project. If you're not a fan of root beer, Ace Hardware also sells Frostop's orange & creme soda, vanilla caramel creme soda, red birch beer, sarsaparilla, grape soda, or black cherry soda.

Now that you know where to grab Frostop's famous soda, the question becomes, should you? Many have expressed their love of the root beer on Reddit, where one reviewer wrote, "Wow. This one strikes a perfect balance. No note overpowering the others." Another said, "I'd never really tasted anything like it. I got a fairly simple sweet root-beer flavor when I first tried it ... then I got hit by entirely different flavors at the back of the tongue before a really nice aftertaste hit me." 

Others think that Frostop root beer is more of an acquired taste. As one Redditor noted, "Was nice and creamy but had a herbal aftertaste that I wasn't jiving with." Although a fellow Reddit user said of the soda, "I enjoy that light wintergreen and liquorice aftertaste," those herbal back notes may not be what everyone is looking for. Some Redditors mentioned that the other Frostop flavors are quite good, so you could always try one of its non-root beers instead.

If you're interested, it's probably worth picking up multiple bottles so you don't have to keep going to Ace Hardware just for soda. Plus, Frostop can be enjoyed in more ways than straight from the bottle. Add a scoop of ice cream for a classic root beer float, or use the  root beer as a major flavor upgrade for chili.