Root Beer (177 reviews)
Way 2 Cool Micro Brewed Root Beer
This is one of those times that I REALLY wish a company had a working website. The website http://www.way2coolsodas.com is on the side of the bottle but it leads to nothing. I doubt this company is out of business because I found this bottle at a Whole Foods in Santa Fe, NM a few months ago. Since I have no way of contacting anyone from this company, I am going to conduct a fictional interview with their owner.
Who are you?
I'm Lloyd, I live in Santa Fe, NM and I founded Way 2 Cool Sodas.
Why did you name it "Way 2 Cool"
I was sitting in my dorm room one day and I was thinking about how awesome it would be if I made my own soda. I thought to myself that if I actually did it, it would be way too cool. So since I couldn't think of anything more radical than that, it stuck.
Do you realize that "Way 2 Cool" is possible the worst beverage name I have ever seen? Even Kronik is better than that.
No way dude! You just don't get it.
And look at the artwork on the bottle! It looks like someone on an acid trip painted it.
I painted that and I do not admit that I did an eighth of shrooms and smoked a bowl before painting it.
The only way the horrible name and art would be redeemable would be if this root beer was exceptional, but it's not. It's pretty generic tasting root beer. I wouldn't be surprised if you took Safeway brand root beer, poured it into these glass bottles, and called it "micro brewed"
That's like, your opinion man.
There you have it. How this got on the shelves of Whole Foods, I will never know.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Fructose
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 2/8/2012
- Comments
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Eric's Famous Energy Root Beer
I found this on tour and was pretty excited to find it. Caffeine in root beer is a very rare thing. Of the 130+ root beers we have reviewed so far, only three have contained caffeine (Skeleteens Jack Black's Dead Red Root Beer, Barq's, and Bawl's G33K Beer). This bottle I have in my hand brings us to number 4. With all the added energy ingredients in this, I was fearing that it would taste more like a gross energy drink with artificial root beer flavor sprinkled in. To my surprise, it was actually really good! It has a very classic root beer taste, with a medium bite to it. If I had not seen the label, I would have never known this was also an energy drink.
I see that Eric's Famous also makes a cola. Hopefully we'll be able to find that one soon, and hopefully it's as good as this.
- Website
- http://www.ericsfamous.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Energy Drink, Root Beer, Soda Pop
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 2/8/2012
- Comments
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Cooper's Cave Ale Company Birch Beer
When I saw the Cooper’s Cave sodas in the store I bought every flavor they had. They are a quasi-local company (about 4 hours away) and the labels looked great. Seriously, look at the design on any one of their flavors. They all have a cool comic book look to them. Remember what your mother said; “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” This is one of those times when that nugget of wisdom works in the opposite way of what she meant. I guess “All that glitters is not gold” is another way of putting it.
This is one bland birch beer. An average amount of birch beer flavor hits you as soon as you take a swig, and just as quick it’s gone. It tricks you in much the same way that diet pop does. You’re greeted with a nice flavor that quickly dissipates, but instead of the gross sting of sucralose you’re left with nothing. It’s strange, it’s sad and it leaves me wanting more flavor.
- Website
- http://www.cooperscaveale.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 1/27/2012
- Comments
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Death Valley Root Beer
Death Valley gets a bad wrap. Whomever named it should go back to marketing school, assuming they didn't graduate, and try again because they forever blackened the name of that place. Look, sure, things happened, it's hot, it doesn't have a quenching water park, and there isn't a nice suburb filled with crap like Applebee's, TGI Friday's, and Joe's Crab Shack for families to go to on the weekend. I am no city planner but I can tell you that you don't need those things to make things happen. I do know you can't have a place called "Death Valley" and have it give off the "fun" vibe.
Here is a start. Everyone that crosses the border from outside to inside Death Valley gets a complimentary bottle of their root beer. This root beer has a fantastic, real vanilla taste that is with you on every sip and a nice, dark flavor throughout. Dark like Death Valley at night but cool, unlike Death Valley, like...ever.
This might have to be limited to one bottle per car as we are trying to fix the image of Death Valley, not bankrupt them. Limit one per car, please share. Don't forget to stop at the Death Valley memorial on your way in and out for great prices on sweatshirts you would have to be crazy to wear anywhere within 250 miles of Death Valley.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Cane Sugar
- Categories
- Root Beer
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Mike Literman on 1/24/2012
- Comments
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Sea Dog Old Style Root Beer
Once again I have been derailed by the taste of a drink. I was planning on writing a big long story about a dog, named Sparky, on a boat and all the adventures she has had. But then I took my first sip of this and was blown away by the taste.
This may be the most complex root beer I have ever tasted. Given the tagline "old style", I was expecting this to be a middle of the road classic tasting root beer like Dad's or IBC. Instead, what I got was a wave of delicious and interesting flavors. At the base level, it's a nice hearty root beer with a medium bite. But once you sit back and take in all the other flavors, it's incredible.
The ingredients include wintergreen oil, anise, and vanilla which are all strongly present in the taste. Each sip tastes different, which is awesome. Sometimes you get a strong licorice aftertaste, and other times it's a smooth vanilla flavor followed by a minty tingle on your lips.
Congratulations Sea Dog, you have made my top 5 root beers of all time.
- Website
- http://seadogbrewing.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 1/19/2012
- Comments
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Columbia Soda Works Sarsaparilla
Hey Fred, can you pour me a root beer? You might want to put down that licorice first or else you might... drop it in the glass like you just did. No, it's ok. Luckily I like licorice, so this should be interesting. Wow, that gave it a really strong licorice/anise taste! I love it. It has a good bite too. You might be on to something with this Fred, what a happy accident.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Sweetener
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 1/16/2012
- Comments
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Reading Draft Creamy Red Birch
This delicious soda has a sordid past with Franklin Mercer. As you all know, he grew up in rural Pennsylvania and this soda was in every store. At a very young age, before he even had his first sip, Franklin knew he loved soda. From ages 3-7 he would bug his parents every time they were at the corner store for a bottle of it. Like clockwork, they said not until he turned 10. This made no sense to Franklin because his older brother had been drinking root beer since the age of 4. Those Mercers were always hard to understand.
This all took a turn for the worst one day when he was visiting his grandparents in Kingston, PA. While they were taking their usual afternoon nap, he ventured into the kitchen for a snack. He couldn't believe his eyes when he found a bottle of this Reading Draft Creamy Red Birch Beer in the fridge. Without hesitation, he cracked it open and took his first sip of liquid heaven. He promptly drank the whole bottle and hid the evidence behind some newspapers on the counter. He didn't hide it good enough because his father found it an hour later when he came and picked it up.
As you can guess, Mr. Mercer was furious! He thought long and hard about what Franklin's punishment should be and he came up with the meanest thing he could think of. As long as Franklin still lived with his parents (which ended up being around 23 more years), an unopened bottle of this soda would be permanently affixed to his bedroom dresser. That bottle just sat there everyday, taunting Franklin. You'd think this would have turned him off from soda, but it actually increased his appetite for the sugary drink.
Franklin never had another bottle of this creamy red birch beer, which is a shame, because it's really good. I'm more partial to birch beers with a good bite to them, but this tastes like a mix of birch beer and red cream soda.
- Website
- http://www.readingdraft.com
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Pure Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 1/15/2012
- Comments
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Bennetts Big Bear Root Beer
Today we announced that the winning name for our "name our mascot" contest was "Sir Durstig." The fine folks over at The Rootbeer Brothers came up with the name and we salute them for it. Their response was for us to grab our finest root beer and drink it in celebration. I tried, but what I grabbed certainly wasn't my best root beer, but it was the only one that I had that was already cold.
When I took my first sip I was nicely surprised at how dark and full-bodied it tasted. I was even more shocked when I looked at the ingredients and saw that it was sweetened with HFCS. Then I noticed that it has molasses in it and I understood and smiled. I want molasses in more root beers. The more I drank the less impressed I was. The molasses flavored remained with every sip, but the complexity of the root beer quality of it faltered. It seemed to get weaker and weaker with every sip, until I only had about a fifth of the bottle left. At that point it got stronger, but still not to the level that I wanted it to be.
This had the potential to be one incredible root beer, but when root beer extract is one of the ingredients I guess I shouldn't have expected much. This certainly wouldn't satisfy a tiny bear cub, let alone a full grown big bear.
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- High Fructose Corn Syrup
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 1/9/2012
- Comments
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Capt'n Eli's Root Beer
I was planning on posting the lyrics to the They Might Be Giants song "The Cap'm" and changing some words so that it praised this root beer. Then I actually drank it, and even though I still wanted to I decided I couldn't lie to our dear readers.
This is one of the worst root beers I have ever tasted. It's very dark and creamy tasting. Normally I would associate both of those things with a good root beer, but someone the cap'm got it all wrong. It's actually a brewed soda, so I'm wondering if something was wrong with the batch I tried. I did a quick Google search and the reviews I found of it were all glowing. Some people even claim it to be one of their favorites. The three people I shared it with and myself couldn't disagree more. The fact that it got worst with each sip really makes me think it was a bad batch. Each sip tasted different and weird in a different way. By the bottom of the bottle the wintergreen oil was so prevalent that it almost tasted like a mint root beer. I normally love complex root beers, but this is all wrong. That's it I need to try another bottle of this.
- Website
- http://www.captneli.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Cane Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Jason Draper on 1/6/2012
- Comments
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Dominion Root Beer
I'm slowly beginning to really enjoy sodas that have honey in them. The first one I ever had was Thomas Kemper and I didn't like it at first. Over time, it grew on me. This is another example of a decent root beer with honey in it. It has a nice classic root beer taste with not a whole lot of bite. But then the honey kicks in and it's a smooth and sweet aftertaste. I'd classify this as "good, but not great". Sorry Dominion, I love the label art though. The deer is very noble.
- Website
- http://www.olddominion.com/
- Country
- United States
- Sweetener
- Sugar
- Rating
- Reviewed By
- Derek Neuland on 12/28/2011
- Comments
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