A&W Root Beer Barrel Candy Tea

      This article is less about a product on the market than about a brilliant new root beer tea of my own invention. For brave readers I promise a transporting multi-sensory experience not to be forgotten. The timid among you should retreat now, while there’s not yet shame in doing so.

      Now that I weeded out the cowards, what I’m going to have you cool people do is drop a piece of A&W Root Beer Barrel Candy into a cup of hot water. If you aren’t familiar, this is a flavored sugar candy, the same as you’d often find on top of a lollipop stick. In this case it’s shaped like a barrel and tastes like root beer. So go ahead, drop it in there.

      Soon enough a pretty spectacular show begins, the heat causes the barrel to crack like a submarine hull beyond its depth, and brown liquid smoke steams out like octopus ink. Now take a sip. The water is flavored! At first the flavor may be so weak you’ll wonder if you’re fooling yourself, but trust your heart, it’s there.

      Note: you’ll need to stir the tea. Left alone the flavoring will lie unblended on the bottom, that sugary root beer goodness tauntingly out of reach. If you find yourself without a stirring tool but with an apple, here’s what you do. Don’t try to stir the tea with your fingers, that water’s hot! Instead, simply enjoy your apple. Eat until the apple is thin enough to be comfortably described as “stick shaped”. Leave a little something on there for later though, you’ll learn why. Now carefully submerge your apple stick in the tea, mindful of the displaced water creeping toward the brim. Gently stir until mixed. Like mercy, this method blesses both your tea and apple, upgrading the latter to a tasty root beer apple. So now you’ve produced two glorious foods not found in nature.

      Once the tea is mixed, wait a little longer, letting the color of the water tell you when the taste has arrived. In time the water turns so brown it’s almost green, the pale brown of a toad. Now smell it. You’re smelling root beer. You may experience vertigo, believing your cup is growing deeper, and worry what you just inhaled is toxic. No worries! It’s just that the root beer barrel at the bottom of your cup is shrinking away, creating an illusion. You should hardly be able to see it anymore anyway. The tea’s probably ready now, take a sip. It tastes good right?

Real Good.