For quite a while I thought "root beer" to be a fictitious beverage, like Romulan Ale or Bloodwine.
Until I stumbled upon some comments by Americans mentioning it to be a real thing!
Only problem was that it is basically unknown and very hard to find here in Germany.
After unsuccessfully trying two special US stores as well as a couple of Asia markets (after someone mentioned that it is also a thing in some Asian countries) I basically gave up.
So imagine my excitement when accidentally coming upon this can in my local Edeka market (a type of German higher end grocery store)!
Now I and my kids are ready to try it, but this should naturally be with the right background.
So: Which Star Trek episode that references it should we watch while tasting it?
We are currently watching TNG, so this would be preferred (if it even appears in there?).
I would even be ok with a Wesley centered episode.. ;-)
Update:
First, thanks to you all for the suggestions! In the end we went with DS9's "Little green men", as other episodes would have required too much contextual knowledge (and are also much darker).
Individually perceived tastes of the Root beer varied somewhere between toothpaste and decomposed rubber.
Final verdict has been mixed:
My daughter completely hates it, my wife is not especially fond of it, I kinda like it and my son now has a new favorite soft drink :-)
Thanks for the suggestion!
That actually seems like it would the perfect episode to watch while drinking rootbeer!
(Found a nice blog post about the scene here: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/ent/star-trek-most-hilarious-scene.html )
But, although I remember the two-parter to be completely great, given that my children haven't seen a single DS9 episode yet, it seems like a bit context-heavy (and also quite dark as a first introduction to DS9).
So I decided to go with the silly "Little Green Man" episode instead, which mentions root beer at one occasion and starts with Nog going off to Starfleet Academy.
That blog post is a little short on the details why the lines are not a joke. I recently saw a good video about it though. The Root Beer Doctrine: How the Federation Wins Without Firing
Solid alternative. A great bottle episode, of which there are very few in DS9.
Pun intended? :-)