Sarsaparilla
Big Ben's Sarsaparilla Soda
Big Ben's (Catawissa Bottling Works) · Old-fashioned cane-sugar sarsaparilla
Catawissa, Pennsylvania, USA
A Pennsylvania throwback from Catawissa Bottling Works, this is sarsaparilla in the gentle, root-beer-adjacent register: sweet cane sugar up front, a light caramel backbone, and a quiet thread of anise that keeps it from reading as plain root beer. A subtle vanilla softness rounds the mid-palate, and the finish stays clean and short rather than lingering on bark or bitterness. The recurring knock is carbonation: bottles tend to land soft and have been reported arriving nearly flat, which flattens an otherwise pleasant, easygoing pour.
Objective sensory intensities (how it tastes) — not a liking score.
Our editorial notes.
Scores
Rate it
Add your own read to the crowd’s — a quick score, or a full tasting.
The maker
Big Ben's is the house soda brand of the Catawissa Bottling Company, a fourth-generation family business that has bottled soft drinks in Catawissa, Pennsylvania since 1926, when the Gregorowicz family converted a creamery into a soda works. The company still makes its cane-sugar sodas in glass at that original location. Sarsaparilla has been part of the Catawissa flavor lineup since the company's early decades.
Ingredients & nutrition
Carbonated water, Sugar, Natural and artificial color, Caramel, Citric acid, Preserved with sodium benzoate.
8 fl oz · 110 cal · 27 g sugar(per serving, as labeled)