Cray for Root Beer, On the Road!!!

Hi all. This weeks tasting was done on the road. Our world travels took us this week to Omaha NE, (yes, THEE Omaha NE). According to a t-shirt I once saw, Omaha is “world famous for absolutely nothing”. I don’t mean to put our host city down. We had a grand time in Omaha. We took in the zoo, indoor rain forest, baseball game, concert, and fireworks. Definitely a fun filled day. We made sure to build in some time for a root beer review and brought four quaffs with us to do our road challenge. The four entries for this round are Empire, Snake River, Mill Stream, and Tower; all in dark glass bottles.

Jackson Hole Soda; Snake River Sarsaparilla: Jackson, WY I am so happy when we try a root beer that I can whole heartily endorse. Snake River Sarsaparilla has everything going for it. Aroma, flavor, and bite. A lovely vanilla aroma, vanilla taste with a wintergreen finish and that ever desired ‘bite’. The one thing I can’t comment on was the head. Our normal testing changed just a bit doing this in a hotel room. But that doesn’t skew my score. This is the second time in a row that I get to honor a root beer with a 5/5. Congrats Snake River Sarsaparilla.

Empire Root Beer; Bristol, RI When we selected this root beer off of the shelf I didn’t give it much of a chance. As you can see by the picture the label of this bottle appears to be slapped on and there isn’t enough glue on it that one side is hanging off. All of the bottles on the shelf were like this. First impressions are a big deal. I figured if you don’t care enough to put your label on the bottle straight then you probably don’t care what goes inside the bottle. Was I surprised to have this be my second favorite pick of the day. If you are a mint/wintergreen lover, you will like this root beer. A strong minty smell and wintergreen flavor helped give it the score I gave. Also, a very strong bite. Had this had a little more vanilla flavor it would have scored higher. Having said that, I’m giving Empire a 4/5.

Millstream Old Time Root Beer; Amana, IA I have had Millstream before and enjoyed it. Pairing it up against competitors allowed me to put a number to the flavor. This root beer I found interesting because the bite was the star of the show and not the flavor or aroma. Actually, there wasn’t much aroma that I could detect at all. Same with the taste. A slightly watered down flavor. Kind of like a root beer barrel candy. Its hard to vote on a beverage that has more bite than aroma or taste. I’m giving Millstream a 3/5.

Tower Old Fashioned Root Beer; The label isn’t clear where this is brewed. It does say ‘Boston’ on the label, but it doesn’t say Boston MA. It also says Prospect Hill Beverages. To be honest with you, It wasn’t good enough for me to care to look online to find out for sure. Tower had a soapy smell to it and the least bite of the four brews. 2/5

RB