HENRY WEINHARDT'S ROOT BEER (19)

Flavor Scale: 19

Henry Weinhard's; now THIS is a root beer meant to be poured down the tilted side of an ice cold mug! Even when expertly poured, at the very end, it froths up with a very foamy, creamy and somewhat thick root beer head. Nothing makes a beer or root beer nut happier than to feel the soft embrace of foam on one's lip. We wear it with pride to announce our satisfaction to the world and that this--THIS is what it means to slap life's trouble in its brutish snout, laugh heartily (maniacally at times), tip the mug to our lips and enjoy the day, right in its confounded face! Okay, perhaps that is a bit of a dramatization but the satisfaction and enjoyment of a good frothy root beer and/or beer do certainly brighten the day.

Here's a small and fairly boring anecdote about my first experience with Henry Weinhardt's. It does have a precautionary lesson behind it though:
The first time I had it, we were at the Campe Verde cafe/gift shop near Bandera, TX, which is right out in the middle of nowhere Hill Country. It was right in the beginning of my quest to drink every root beer I could possibly find. Saw it in the shop; ordered it; opened it and took the first surprisingly enjoyable gulp; set it down; turned to talk to my brother and/or cousin, and about five seconds later, the next thing I know, foam is erupting from my bottle like a slow magma making a nice mess for myself. I hadn't been violent with it at all, and it had the whole neck and them some to sneak up out of it. I took note for the next times to remember the volatility. Though I've still had times where all I did was open it and a few seconds later it still managed to slowly creep out the top.

Henry Weinhard's Root Beer, founded in Portland Oregon, was first brewed during the peaceful and practically tension free prohibition era. A lot of beer brewers were known to switch root beer brewing at the time, because what else were they going to do? All they had to do was change the recipe and add another word to the name. Henry Weinhard's is exactly that though. It feels like a root beer brewed by a beer brewmeister, which worked out fabulously in my opinion.

The texture is very smooth and the carbonation is very subtle but nicely noticeable at the very end. Imagine a good amber lager but make the beer slightly more viscous; that's a good way to describe the texture and carbonation--if you're familiar with beers at least. The taste is almost closer to cream soda. Pretty sweet and most definitely creamy, but it still has that, for lack of better adjective, darker kind of feeling to it, just like you'd have with a darker beer. One downside to it being a very good example of a draft style ale, the carbonation goes away fairly quickly. It seems very much meant to be poured in a mug, hopefully on tap, and enjoyed thoroughly yet very much within the near future.

 I'd have to say the vanilla flavoring is just enough as it is coupled with honey, neither being overbearing. A lot of root beer's I've known that use honey either use it as the main flavor and overpower the root or the only reason I knew it was in there is because it was in the ingredients. However, I really like how well it fits in with the sassafras hear.

Burp Factor: despite smaller bubbles, it comes out deep, yet not boisterous, and possibly foamy. But a pleasant aftertaste.

All in all, an excellent gourmet root beer whose critique likely suffered, optimistically, only trace amounts of bias. This marks one of my favorites so if you think your tastes are similar to mine this is exactly what I'd suggest to you. Also possibly enjoyable for darker beer drinkers who also partake in life's sweeter accomplishments. Thank you for reading and, as always, may your mugs stay frosty, frothy, and frequently filled!

P.S. (Pre-Script) I'm posting this before I put up the pictures as I currently indubitably lost my camera somewhere in the house. There will be photos very soon though I promise!

The Hiatus

I apologize to anyone who've been reading. I've been on a wee bit of a break, as if that might be an understatement. Here are my excuses: First it was school/work and then it was laziness/writing a book, though mostly laziness. I will be getting back to writing more reviews here very shortly. I've been kinda sad I haven't been doing these and it's far past due that I get back to writing on here again.

So, first root beer I'll be doing this week is going to be Henry Weinhardt's Gourmet Root Beer! It's one of my all time favorites and a local here in north Texas.

Again, sorry for the long silence, but the reviews shall recommence forthwith and posthaste.

Jeff

IBC Root Beer (11)

Flavor Scale: 11

It dawned on me that with a scale of comparison might need something people are more familiar with so they know how to compare. So I decided to do a very well-traveled root beer, IBC. IBC Root Beer is found most everywhere, possibly because it is parented by Dr. Pepper. Actually I myself was unaware of this til today, probably because I didn't realize Dr. Pepper owned two root beers, which would seem weird for a company to do. The one I, and probably most everyone, think of as Dr. Pepper's flagship in the root beer industry is the market's #1 root beer, A&W. Anywho, more on IBC's big brother some other time.

I was immediately made aware that IBC may not have been the best choice to demonstrate what happens on each side of the scale, however, I dare say IBC demonstrates the quintessential taste of root beer. It strays equally in both directions from its equilibrium giving only a medium experience of the root side and the sweet side. Describing how it tastes beyond that is diction-numbingly limiting and I can only think to use the phrase "It tastes like root beer..." If you don't know what root beer tastes like, HERE'S A GOOD PLACE TO START. It is so smack-dab in the middle of the scale that, depending on what I most recently ate, it can swing slightly to one side of the scale or the other.

Which reminds me to share this note: this is universal to food tasting of every sorts and you probably already are aware of this yourself after you brush your teeth, assuming you have decent dental hygiene. Eating or especially drinking anything immediately post toothpaste is not a preferable experience. When you introduce flavors and solutions into your mouth, they tend to stick around for a wee bit. So now everything you eat and drink mixes with what is already hanging out on your taste-buds either counter-acting or creating a new taste altogether. Thus I add this precaution to reveling the sweet taste of root beer: eating sugary food during or before-hand can severely dull the sweetness of root beer. A common pastime for we Americans, and others I'm sure, is when we want to grab some candy it's nearly impossible for us to resist getting a soda with it. They're the sweet sugary duo of convenient store nostalgia, stamped into our memory of the times dad took us down to the gas station to have a hyper inducing treat. Today, here are so many of us improperly imbibing fizzy ambrosia dulling its sweetness with what we paired them with out of association and habit.

This is a bit of root beer etiquette I suppose, though in actuality, some may be able to use this to their advantage. If you don't like how sweet it is and you want to taste more of the wintergreen or sassafras flavoring, then by all means, chowing down some [insert candy of choice] before you take a swig may lead you to the experience what you treasure most in root beer's fine spectrum of flavors.

Right, IBC Root Beer, most people I know are familiar with and in favor of a good ole bottle of the stuff. So don't confuse moderate with mediocrity. I myself enjoy a bottle every once in awhile (though it helps that is nearly an omnipresent root beer).

Burp factor: guttural and boisterous, though depleted in a single blast. Not overbearing taste. Thumbs up.

Thank you for sticking around and reading some words about a beloved beverage. May your mugs stay frosty, frothy, and frequently filled!

Root Beer and The Law

A lot of people don't realize how much root beer is out there, nor how fanatic some of us can be, and with a much more commonplace bottled brethren known as beer, it has led to some misunderstandings of the legal sorts.

On quite a few occasions, I've been asked to show my ID as I nonchalantly placed my six-pack of frothy delight next to the register. I can count at least 6 times I've embarrassed cashiers who bashfully apologized when I point out the "Root" on the label. It's a fun little chuckle for myself as a frequent root beer buyer, but I'm really waiting for when I get pulled over for presenting the silhouette of a dark bottle to my lips as I drive unashamedly past Texas's finest on the highway. It's an inevitability given how often I drink root beer, yet I'm disappointed it hasn't happened yet. Though, I'll have to brace myself to keep my smart-ass comments to myself when it happens, else I might not have as humorous of an experience as I day-dreamed.

Despite not being pulled over, I have had one conversation with an officer over the nature of the beverage I was publicly indulging in. Now for the cop's sake, I have to spare the details of my location. Fry Street is the local bar street immediately off the UNT (University of North Texas) campus, so you can imagine the crowd buzzing around there. So it's not surprising when a policeman eyeballs a young college student approaching the driver's side door of a car parked 50 feet from a bar while brandishing an open container, in this case a brown bottle, his suspicions suggest to him he should approach the youngster with some questions. At that point, my experience with law enforcement was limited and not exactly positive.

The last time I had spoken to an officer, I was reporting a bit of money stolen and immediately found myself being interrogated and accused of allegedly wasting it on hookers, illegal fireworks, and black tar heroin. Very specifically black tar heroin for some reason (true story. Small town cops tend to be very bored to my understanding). My favorite quote from that story is the officer revealingly saying, "Now I know when I was your age, I probably put some girls through junior college. And there were some times me and my buddies wanted to have some fun and snuck down to Mexico for a few illegal fireworks..." Needless to say, my trust for my local keepers of the peace immediately skyrocketed...

Suffice it to say, I was a little nervous as the officer ordered me to stop, despite the knowledge I was completely innocent. I had just exited the coffee shop on the corner with a half emptied bottle of Zuberfizz root beer and found myself now convincing a cop of its non-alcoholic character. After pointing out the "Root" on the label and nervously offering if he would like to try it or smell it to be sure, the officer, maybe a little weirded out by my offerings and attempts at getting him to smell my drink, let me on my way peacefully and unrestrained.

Not the most exciting experience, but an experience nonetheless. I also get this feeling of observed disapproval when I pull up to anywhere chugging down a bottle in front of watchful eyes. Now, I decided to do a bit of googling and was not surprised to see people had a few stories in which they were pulled over for drinking and driving, root beer of course. In light, I would like to know what kind of stories you've got to share as a root beer drinker put under the spotlight of our finest law enforcers?

JUDGE WAPNER ROOT BEER (4)

Flavor Scale: 4

Oh jeebus...I find myself hard to refuse a root beer that pastes Judge Wapner accusingly pointing at me and sentencing me to drink his root beer. In case you aren't familiar, look up The People's Court. Yet I have some mixed feelings about this company. When I visited Rocket Fizz's website, I was immediately confronted with the visage of Snooki on a soda bottle for "her own" cherry soda. I'm not sure if I felt humored or offended. Then there was the bacon soda......That's it, I'm done! Walking away from the site. So they had this root beer, Judge Wapner Root Beer, and I reviewed it somewhat like this...

I might've burst into tears and cried "Oh God please no! Just send me to jail!" if a judge sentenced me to drink this stuff indefinitely, but that's my, albeit over-dramatic, personal opinion. As you can see on the scale, this one veers rather far from my comfort zone. This ones for the root lovers, or let's just call them Rooters for brevity and the fun of nicknaming's sake. Though I wouldn't necessarily whole-heartedly recommend this one even to y'all; it tastes kind of like a half-assed root beer. Not a lot of strong flavors yet it doesn't quite taste balanced in its sweet and root characteristics. The label off-handedly promotes Pure Cane Sugar but it mostly comes off as a gimmick rather than a noticeable attribute. I would say "not something I would write home about" but that's a situational paradox full of silly.

Seriously though, if you look at the circumstance of where it comes from, a soda company that makes every kind of soda it can come up with (I mean, bacon, it's only liquid form is grease!), Judgy here files right into the category of a flavor hole that they had to fill. Which makes root beer lovers like me really sad. Here's the deal, there's a vast difference in the quality of a root beer based on how much attention it gets. In retrospect, this is a universally applicable predicament. What we learn here is that if you want to find awesome root beer that you might really love, your chances decrease and increase whether the root beer you try comes from a soda chain or a root beer origin or specialty company, respectively.

Now it sounds like a hated this one, but to be honest it wasn't that bad. It just wasn't something I could imagine anyone even of preferable taste falling in love with. You might fall in love with the label perhaps if you were a die-hard Judge Wapner fan, weirdo.

That's all I've got for this one unfortunately. If you've got any questions about it I might be able to answer it better and give a little more detail I might have missed, that's what the comment box is for.

POLAR CLASSICS PREMIUM ROOT BEER (16)

Flavor Scale: 16

Today's concoction is Polar Classics: Premium Root Beer. I attempted doing some homework on the brand but at best was only able to find a Facebook page which did lead me to discover its origin of Worcester, MA, which I've had the pleasure to visit once but unfortunately did not make my tasty acquaintance with this root beer while I was at its home. The page also had a link to the site that lead nowhere as well as it boasted most proudly their coveted awards of Motor Trend's "Best Soda to Drive With" and Car and Driver's "Top Soda to Consume While Driving." What makes a soda worthy of the favored attention of two big motor magazines? Maybe my motoring taste-buds need more experience for this one but maybe we'll find out what kind of root beer motorists and grease monkeys hail most excellent behind a wheel.

Okay, this one is right up my avenue of tastes! I took a sip out of the bottle and immediately had to stop and arm myself with a frozen mug. For those of you who don't know me, I keep a mug armory of a variety of sizes in my freezer at all times. I am always prepared to properly serve whatever root beer is in my fridge to any and all who come to visit. Now when it comes to root beer, you might think it would be preferable to always drink it out of a nice iced over mug, but I would advise to say that it isn't meant for every root beer. For those beverages made with a fizz that foams, a smooth creamy texture, and a ripe vanilla sweetness, IT IS A HEAVENLY PAIRING HERALDED BY THE ANGELS AND STITCHED INTO THE FABRIC OF FATE! *Ahem...right, but as you move across the bar in a leftwards motion, the characteristic of those root beers is best served cold but not more than what your refrigerator provides. Any more and you start dulling the herby flavor and sharpening the usually comparably increased amount of carbonation. So anything I might place below a 10 I would probably suggest be best enjoyed from it's chilled bottled exterior.


So, Polar Classics. The texture is very smooth; enough to not call it syrupy but it's still approaching the county line on it. Not a lot of carbonation, hence the near syrupy viscosity. There isn't a lot of head when you pour this one but it does provide enough to give it the aesthetic appeal of a creamy drink when poured into a frosty mug. Sugar is the most notable catalyst for the foam and the amount of head you achieve can be indicative of how sugary a mixture is. That or I'm afraid you need to work on your pouring skills.

Taste. This ones for the creamy vanilla lovers and the moderates leaning that direction, and I guess motorists too. Not too sweet but enough for someone with a weakness to sweet stuff to get a good flavor high. The taste is of a mild caramel vanilla, heavier on the vanilla side than the caramel but overall not an extraordinary flavorful amount. It definitely leans away from the roots in its flavor, which kind of fades into the background without being completely drowned out. But this is why I might not recommend this to those who find themselves more on the left side of the scale.

Burp factor; mild and short-lived but what's noticeable is satisfying. Not a lot of carbonation to really kick it off.

I have to admit, I didn't test the affect it has on drivers, that mystery remains still at large. Though perhaps we may have caught a glimpse of car fanatics root beer of choice. However I am still looking for my pulled-over-for-drinking-root-beer story and perhaps I'll have to have another look back at this one and experience what Motor Trend magazine deems most worthy of automotive fizzy drinks. Until next time, may your mugs stay frosty, frothy, and frequently filled!

DELICIOUS ROOT BEER (11)

Flavor Scale: 11

And with a twist--we're off! My first review, very fittingly, is a root beer with a French name, Racinette Délicieux. Actually, it's firstly annotated as Delicious Root Beer, but given its origin it makes sense to see both of these names equally represented on the front. Johnnie Ryan is the owner of the label who makes this particular root beer, out of Niagara Falls, NY. Now, down to the business that isn't on the label.


The scale I was mentioning before is going to be from 1 to 21. We'll call it the "Flavor" scale for names sake.  One through 7 is for people who will like the more "herbal" side of root beers, like sarsaparillas for example, 8 through 14 for those who prefer the middle side of balanced flavors or more regular soda tasting drinks, and of course, 15 through 21 being the sweet toothed vanilla froth loving root beer lovers. In case you couldn't pick up on it, those are the highest numbers because I'm biased and a numeric decision had to be made. Never fear, food discrimination is against my oral morals and everything gets a chance to be graded as negligent to my preferences as possible. Back to Delicious Root Beer!


This is a pure cane sugar made soda, and it is definitely evident. You fans of the pure cane stuff will probably enjoy a root beer like this. It is pretty sweet, but still on the rootier side of business. This one's very well balanced and has something I think everybody can enjoy. I'll give it an 11 on the scale but say that it may lean a little more in favor of the Roots as far as main taste goes. If it weren't for the pure cane sugar and how noticeable it was, I'd probably rate it more like a 7. 


Delicious Root Beer, however very likeable, flopped when it came to the burp test. I don't know about you but when it comes to great root beers, there's nothing like finding a new amber liquid love and half an hour afterwards be given the chance to revisit the sensation. Say what you will about the propriety of burping, but you can't deny it's magical ability to punish or reward you for the good or bad food choices you so recently made. Besides, the nature of fizzy drinks is that they bring about the event of burping, inevitably. Enjoy life's little inevitables when you can. Point is, there wasn't much to write home about my burp experience with this one. I think I tasted something I ate 6 hours prior more than I tasted root beer, much to my despair. 


As far as my personal tastes go, it's not particularly near my favorites, but it's still enjoyable and had that nice equilibrium between the polar sides of flavor brought out by the sugar that I could really appreciate. I'd suggest it to anyone and everyone, as evident to it's moderation on the flavor scale. But as a reminder, the scale, perhaps even this whole blog, is meant to help you find root beers that will fit your taste-buds best interests. So find where you might fit on the scale, or perhaps you don't and you either love or hate all of it, and I'll see if I can't be of help. Let me know if there's more you'd like me to cover or any other questions in the comments. Thank you for reading and take care!

Cancer Flavored Root Beer

Root beers around the world are made with varying roots and barks to give them their own particular flavor; wintergreen(probably on of the most common), birch, ginger, sarsaparilla (pronounced "sasperilla" with a twang) are 3 common variances of root beers. But the root we associate with the everyday named Root Beers is none other than sassafras. 

Now in our beloved drink's beginning, root beer's main ingredient, like most American beverages of its era, turned out to be something that can kill you. The oil in sassafras is made up largely of safrole, which just so happens to fit in a little category science calls...carcinogens.  Ah yes, those were the days of real carbonated drinks. If you weren't getting high on Coke, you could at least get a little cancer from root beer. What era of beverages could be more exciting than leading you into a battle with death while hallucinating Death's corporeal figure challenging you to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors! for your soul?! 

Well, our wimpy age decided that we weren't extreme enough for those kinds of liquid challenges and used excuses like, "Maybe we don't want our children guzzling down cocaine" or perhaps, "Maybe general store drinks aren't supposed to give you cancer," and in agreement, the FDA has thought to make illegal anything and everything containing safrole. And cocaine too, of course. Now don't fret dear readers, even if we lost part of the original ingredients, we didn't lose the taste of good ole root beer. Sassafras producers, put in the precarious position of having their entire crop of choice becoming potentially unmarketable as a food product, decided to add a few extra steps in the harvesting process. Namely, extracting the oil from the sassafras. So lucky little us; we get to have our root beer and drink it too...and have it not give us cancer. Huzzah.

I'll be posting interesting (pending perspective) little tidbits of history and trivia every once in awhile, and if you're wondering where I get some of this stuff: the answer is an astoundingly obvious "The Internet." Though more specifically, there's this pretty neat site for the root beer fanatic, Root Beer World. Good source of root beer history and news, though I do humbly get a few details here and there from ye ol' wikipedia and the rest of the nooks and crannies of the interwebs. I dare not claim these discoveries as my own research results, but I will happily share this cool stuff in my own words with those who are interested or bored. Thanks for reading. May your mugs be frosty, frothy, and frequently filled! 

(That's definitely going to be my catch phrase unless I think of a better one. I'm a dork for alliteration.)

A Beginning

Thus the adventures of a (currently) amateur root beer connoisseur 
commence! My quest: to taste, remember and characterize every root 
beer in the world!!!...Well, that might be a bit on the ambitious 
side, however my optimism is frighteningly durable. Quick background: 
My name is Jeff; a young lover of fine bubbly root extracts. 
"Credentials to be a critic of root beer" you ask? A life story would 
unfold starting at my young impressionable childhood, but I'd be more 
precise to say that I've been fanatically seeking and drinking root 
beer for about...nearing a decade. As a taster qualification, I am 
fortunate to have the tastebuds of a so-called "Supertaster." They 
Might Be Giants can educate you further if you would like to know more 
about that. 


HOW IT'S GONE SO FAR
I've horded one bottle of every different brand of root 
beer I've downed in a savoring manner. Well, most of them were 
savorable...I don't know what the Aussies put in their root beer, but 
I can't say I've ever had a harder time finishing a six pack. Don't 
worry, I'll limit the bad memories to the one brand, given future 
samples rear a different experience, and if it pleases Australia, I'll 
pretend that one didn't come from anywhere in particular. More on that 
later. Also more to be on later, tellings of root beer related mishaps, silliness, and stories of interest.


THE GAME PLAN
I will be starting over and re-tasting and reviewing everything I've 
had and then pushing on from there. Now, to reiterate how ambitious it 
is to, at the very least, attempt to drink every root beer in current 
existence, there are over 2500 known makers of root beers!!! I've 
scratched the surface with 42. That puts me at about a whopping 1.5% 
completion percentage. Granted I haven't yet "professionally" sought 
out root beers until now, and the list I'm basing this number on 
includes root beers of all makes (i.e. birch beer, ginger beer, and 
the like). AND those 42 are primarily only in and around some places 
I've been to in Texas, with a couple of outsiders in between. Everywhere I go in this world I will be maniacally observant for new flavors and names. 


THE CRITIQUE
So, on to business, there won't necessarily be a ranking system, but I will be placing the them on a scale that kinda measures where it fits on a comparable taste preference, along with noting each characteristic. When it comes to root beers, there are about three main types of flavors. There are the gourmet root beers, which are for those with a particular sweet tooth. They tend to be creamier in texture, frothier, and use more sugar and/or molasses; a draught style so they say sometimes. On the other side of the scale, you would have the stronger root flavored root beers. (I'll give them a title some other day.) I would liken them to hop beers in similarity to character, not in flavor (Thank Jeebus!). This is where you can taste the sassafras, sarsaparilla, ginger, birch, etc. a little stronger. Or perhaps a lot stronger. They also tend to be lighter and more bubbly. And then there are you moderates. I'll be putting a name in the middle of the scale and categorizing root beers as such because damnit! moderates deserve there own stake on the scale. You don't have to pick one extreme or the other. That's right, I'm looking at YOU, American politics!


FUTURE PLANS
*I hope to be making my own line of root beers (<-- check it out, that's plural yo) from scratch someday and sharing it freely with my readers, perhaps in trade of their favorite local beverages they would like me to sample [wink wink]. Don't worry, there will be plenty of testing to make sure I'm not sending out bottles of poisons or improperly disposed of nuclear waste. Besides, I have plenty of guinea pi--friends...guinea friends...who will graciously test it, myself first, for lethality and pleasantness.




This should be my longest submission of text for the rest of this blog; just thought I'd clear things up from the get-go as it were, so they say, more or less, if you don't mind. Expect a critique and a nicer looking blog-site in the very very near future. Pictures and everything will be had. Thank you for reading, may your mugs be frosty, frothy and frequently filled!