A combination of fruit juice, sparkling water, and prebiotics, Poppy soda is billed as a healthier alternative to regular soda, which can include up to 10 teaspoons of sugar per 12 oz can. The gut-happy brand offers 15 flavors on its website, such as wild berry, grape, and orange cream. However, there’s one Poppi soda flavor that’s watered down beyond recognition: the root beer.
The loser in our list of every Poppi soda flavor, ranked, this beverage was weak, muted, and far removed from the complex character we’d expect of a classic root beer. The best root beer brands, such as Sprecher and Bulldog, are spicy, sweet, and fizzy with a note of caramel and vanilla. Traditionally, the unique flavor of root beer came from a plant called sassafras (in which sassafras oil was banned in the 1960s by the FDA due to its negative effects on the liver). However, it’s now recreated in modern recipes with a mix of corn syrup, additives, and flavorings that mimic its inherently warming personality.
Unfortunately, Poppi’s version of root beer simply isn’t gutsy enough to stand up to modern competition. While it tasted vaguely like root beer, the strength of the beverage was so mild that we’d recommend you skip it. Yes, it has the whole prebiotic thing going for it with the addition of organic apple cider vinegar (and is only 25 calories per serving), but it doesn’t challenge the flavor of other root beer drinks on the market in any respect.
Reddit reviewers say Poppi’s root beer tastes like ‘mop water’
Our opinion on the watered down taste of Poppi’s root beer soda isn’t a lone voice in the crowd. For example, a commenter on a Reddit thread discussing the popular brand’s root beer in particular posted that “this may be the worst root beer I’ve ever had. Just truly awful.” Another went so far as to say “this is root beer made from spilled root beer that has been cleaned up with a mop. The root beer/mop water then resides in a mop bucket for a week and then canned. Or that is how I picture it’s made.”
You’d be better off trying another flavor of Poppy’s prebiotic soda, such as the No. 1 flavor in our ranking: strawberry lemon. This unusual combination of flavors simply blew us away. The strawberry complemented the zesty notes from the lemon while the citrus counterbalanced the sweetness from the strawberry juice, cane sugar, and stevia in the ingredients list. This resulted in a soft drink with a well-rounded and multi-dimensional character that was refreshing and crisp. Poppi’s ginger lime offering (the runner-up in our taste test) was equally as good, but as this combination of flavors is pretty common we put the strawberry lemon in first place.
