Do you have an equivalent to the American Root Beer Float in your country?

17 comments

1. Sometimes in German ice cream parlours you get orange juice with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. If you order ice coffee or chocolate, it also has scoops of ice cream. Italians also have a dessert called affogato, but there you pour espresso over ice cream, so not quite the same.

   I have never seen it made with a fizzy soft drink.

2. Coke floats are a thing in the UK, but almost exclusively found in restaurants or bbq places explicitly trying to be American.

   You can buy cream soda in supermarkets in the UK, but it’s far from popular and I doubt would even make it into the top 20 brands of carbonated drinks sold.

3. We don’t have root beer over here to begin with. It’s super fringe. In general, people over here would associate the taste with toothpaste.

   But our *Eiskaffee* is actually a scoop of vanilla ice cream floating in the cold coffee rather than ice cubes. Much better.

   And you can get the same with orange juice. It’s commonly called *Sanfter Engel — smooth angel*.

4. Putting ice cream in a drink is a completely foreign concept to me. I don’t even know how it works. Do you eat the ice cream and drink alternately? Doesn’t it sink into the drink? Or do you eat it with a spoon in the end?

5. Root beer does not exist here.

   > or is the idea of placing ice cream into a sugary drink seem excessive?

   That seems excessive. Only thing we have is [Eiskaffee](https://static.tegut.com/fileadmin/_processed_/d/a/csm_Eiskaffee-Vanilleeis-Sahne-Schokosauce-1920x1080_7051bfc198.webp), where you put vanilla ice cream and maybe some whipped cream into cold black coffee. But said coffee isn’t sugary at all, just plain black coffee you drink every day.

6. No, not really. There’s restaurants with an Affogato on the desert menu but mostly that’s it.

   Not even the orange juice and ice cream thing the Germans do, which is a shame because it’s lovely.

   There’s root beer in the “American” sections of supermarkets and they sell them in Asian supermarkets. I’ve had a can once not too long ago and it tastes like a certain toothpaste.

7. – How do you make a dead baby float?

   – Glass of root beer and two scoops of dead baby.

   I heard that in the US in the 1970s (there were a lot of dead baby jokes at the time). I don’t think I’ve been anywhere you could buy root beer since. People sometimes put scoops of ice cream in fizzy soft drinks here in the UK, particularly in Italian cafés.

8. Root beer isn’t a thing here, and adding ice cream to your soda is basically unthinkable

9. It’s interesting to read these comments. Not Europe, here in New Zealand I heard up until the 1980s spiders was very a popular drink – it us a scoop of ice-cream added to coke.

   Otherwise in East and Southeast Asia’s starred hotels’ cafes/coffee shops/lobby drinks sections up to the 1990s, there was ice-cream soda – which is a scoop of ice-cream of a flavour of your choice added to soda water.

10. No. We drink hot chocolate with whipped cream, but that’s it. We don’t sell root beer (though I’ve tried it, it is incredibly gross), and we don’t put ice cream in our drinks…

11. A glass of Irn Bru with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream in it is quite popular for kids in summer.

12. Ice cream-soda. Although I’m pretty convinced that a lot of people won’t even know what I’m talking about, it’s a bit old fashioned nowadays I believe. Mom made it sometimes when I was a kid (90’s) and she used to have it as a kid/teen.

    It has vanilla ice cream, a little bit of jam (eg. Strawberry) and sprite. You put couple scoops if ice cream in a tall glass, spoonful of jam and top it with sprite (or originally it was “sittisooda” a type of lemon soda)

13. I remember Coke floats from when I was a kid, but they’re not widespread enough to be available in restaurants or ice cream parlours – it was just something you made at home.

    I prefer to make a lemonade float – it’s a nice, refreshing treat on a warm summer’s day.

14. Root beer floats are one thing I definitely miss from the US. They’re awesome on a hot summer day.

15. Schneemass, a 1l Maßkrug with about a quarter l of clear liquor (Korn, Steinhäger…), some Vanilla ice cream and topped off with Sprite or sometimes Fanta.

16. Maybe not exactly what you asked about, but it sorta fits “placing ice cream into a sugary drink”.

    We have a drink/soup made from rosehip (*nyponsoppa*). The fruit, not the flower. It’s very sweet and kinda thick. It’s the kind of thing you eat when you’re sick to get some energy. It’s also sometimes eaten with ice cream and/or small almond cookies (amarett[io]) added to it as a desert.

    https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbiskvi
    ^
    Has a picture without the ice cream.

17. No. The closest is ice coffee wherein you put vanilla icecream in a latte.