Bundaberg – Root Beer Review
Straight up from down under
The wife of my girlfriend’s co-worker hails from Australia, and Bundaberg is his favorite soda from the big island. He was kind enough to offer a bottle for her/our private consumption. Apparently, Pepsi has started distributing it locally, but I have no official confirmation of this. Little did he know I swiped it and reviewed it. Hooray for freebies!
First thing, this has an awesome little pull tab on it, but, being the American I am, I’m not quite familiar with this method of opening a bottle, so my pull is slow and careful. It comes off without incident, and this foreign drink is subjected to the first test of any drink, the aroma test. It smells awesome and super sweet; there’s 44 g of the white stuff in this 12.7 oz bottle. The first taste I recognize is the spicy, dark sweet of molasses. I catch hints of ginger and vanilla, and the licorice shows up in the aftertaste. This is brewed using yeast, which often turns a soda fermenty and unpleasant to most people, but I can hardly tell with this, except for the malty-sweet taste and beer-like mouth-feel after I swallow. The carbonation is light and the sweetness is surprisingly mellow and doesn’t stick to your tongue too long.
It has a nice spice and an interesting tang to it, something many American root beers lack, besides originality. The cane sugar and molasses give it a perfect, rich sweetness that the darker sugar tones down. The flavor combination is perfect, leaving nothing to be desired of this Australian treat. That’s exactly what it should be considered, a treat, if you can find it. It currently isn’t distributed in the U.S. Their slogan on the bottle, Naturally Brewed to be Better, seems apt. I have nothing negative to say about this soda, despite the large amount of sugar in it. This may be the best root beer I’ve ever had.
You can get it shipped your way from The Soda Shop.
Score: 5 out of 5. Root beers rarely get better than this.
– WiseGuise
*Danithius Review Rebuttal*
Wow. So this is what real, naturally brewed root beer tastes like. My palate is buzzing from this brewed root tonic, which packs a champagne-y tang from the actual fermentation process that it went through (although it is totally non-alcoholic.) Real sarsaparilla root, licorice root, vanilla bean, and molasses make this drink about as real as any root beer you’ll ever drink in your life. Yes, it is a helluva lot of sugar, but WiseGuise is right. This is a treat that is meant to be savored as an experience – guzzling it would be a crime! I dig it as much as he did.
User Reviews: 
(5 votes, average: 3.40 out of 5)
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Interesting, but pretty good tasting, I found it at Payson Market in four packs!
Bundaberg was the first root beer I ever tried (I’m in the UK) and it’s pretty expensive and can only be found in one shop.
I was wondering if there were any better root beers out there- but unless I find some special one- offs, it looks like I tried the best first. Thanks guys. I’ll be trying some American versions when I’m next there, but I’m glad you think this drink is as awesome as me!
MTFBWY
I found the bottle cap of this drink today and it reminded me that I wanted to share my experience. About once a month, my wife and I would try out a new kind of soda. We’ve tried every kind of bottled root beer that we’ve come across (over a dozen); when we spotted this one on a grocery store shelf in Idaho we had to try it too. It was the coolest soda bottle design by far. I thought the taste was terrible. My wife didn’t finish hers (which had never happened before or since). 2 people is not much of a sample size, but regardless, I won’t ever buy one again.