Root Beer Roundup- The Dude Abides

So I’ve just been generally awful with updating my blog lately. That is really for two reasons. Reason #1: I’m a busy person. Well, not really, but I like to think I am. And I don’t know about you, but writing a blog post takes a lot out of a gal. I take a while to think about it, then think about it some more. Come up with witty little things that I don’t write down. Write the damn thing. Spend countless minutes trying to remember aforementioned witty little things. Then I read it. Tear it apart and edit. Then post. Then re-edit. I’m getting second thoughts about finishing this post just thinking about it. Reason #2 is a much tougher reason to deal with: SOBER SEPTEMBER. My husband and I decided that September was going to be a time to dry up, get our shit together and get back into some semblance of a shape. So I’ve been avoiding beer. But that spawned a great idea at the store the other night. ROOT BEER REVIEWS!

I like Root Beer a lot. When a brewery makes their own, I often will ask for it to be included in a sampler because I think there is a lot you can do with root beer. I’m also a big fan of anything that is made with sassafras, because I think we can all agree, sassafras just sounds like some badass you want to hang out with.

The root beer roundup consisted of three varieties: Sioux City Sarsaparilla (any Lebowski fans or Sam Elliott fans would not pass that one up), River City Root Beer, and Rat Bastard Root Beer.

The line up

We started with the Sioux City Sarsaparilla, “The Granddaddy of All Root Beer.” Probably not surprisingly, Sioux City Sarsaparilla is not made in Sioux City. It is made in New York (and, yes, I just yelled that like the old Pace Picante commercials). Sioux City Sarsaparilla had some nice spice and vanilla aromas, which were brought out by ample carbonation. Aside from the spice and vanilla, the flavor had a molasses taste that was nice and balanced out the sweetness.  This was a solid root beer, but nothing crazy or unexpected.

Sometimes the bar, well, he eats you.

Next, River City out of Sacramento. I’m going to say this up front, not my favorite root beer. The aroma had the usual spice and vanilla but was really cola-like. The root beer poured almost pitch black (again, like a cola) and had a lower carbonation level. Coupled with the sweetness, this made for a syrupy drink. It wasn’t the worst root beer I’ve had, but I’m not going to search it out again.

Finally, Rat Bastard Root Beer “Tastes Like a Son of a Bitch.” I’m not going to lie. I wanted this to be my favorite. I wanted this to be absolutely amazing. Root Beer is a pretty sassy beverage, so I felt like the name and logo meant it was going to be amazing. The ingredient list was also pretty wild, including skull cap (badass, again), reishi and mad dog weed, amongst other homeopathic ingredients. The smell was not your typical root beer aroma, it almost had a cigar shop quality to it mixed in with a light spice and ample vanilla. It was thin and light on the palate, not as carbonated as you would expect and the flavor was equally delicate. For such a forward bottle and logo, I was expecting some big, bold flavors, but sometimes it is just as bold to be a little understated and really well balanced. This was a good root beer and a little more exciting because it wasn’t so typical from the packaging to the ingredients to the flavor.

Just because it’s Sober September, doesn’t mean brewing is out of the question, so hopefully I’ll have some more actual beer related news to write about after getting some porter in the fermenter. I also have about 10 pumpkins coming on so I’m thinking a Chocolate Pumpkin Porter maybe in my near future. Stay tuned, same bat time, same bat channel.