Mark, one of the owners of Maine Root, was understandably upset by my disparaging review of Maine Root some months back, so he graciously offered to send me a fresh six-pack. After giving it full consideration, I updated my original review, found here.
As many of you know, I have an intense distrust of the Plain Folk, what with their shady electric plug-in fireplace business and so forth. But I’m a sucker for roadside stands, and on the backroads of Chester and Lancaster Counties in Pennsylvania, you can scarce drive a mile without passing one. Which is why I couldn’t pass up this sign:
We made a U-turn and headed down the road to the Amish farmhouse to get ourselves a few bottles.
“Cold” is a relative term, here, considering the Amish’s absurd mistrust of modern refrigeration. “Homemade” should be taken with a grain of salt, too. I asked the girl ringing up my purchases how they make it, and they basically fill a jug with Stoltzfus Root Beer Extract, add some water, sugar, and yeast, and cap it with a poorly-sealing cap that prevents pretty much any carbonation from building up. And they’re selling it hand over fist to us naive English.
Well, Colin seems to like it anyway.
The genius of this whole setup is that they probably don’t need a license or any messy FDA regulation, so to fast-track my operation, I may just have to grow myself a neck beard and get a buggy. See you by the side of road. Every day but Sunday.
Kate finally got her first taste of root beer. I hope it’s quite a few years before she starts hitting the hard stuff.
All I can say is WOW. Found this celery soda at Philly’s Famous 4th Street Deli. (Which has an angelic corned beef, by the way.) The soda starts out sweet like ginger ale, but after a few seconds, you get hit with the peppery taste of the extract of celery seed.
My barber Joe told me about Cel-Ray, which is apparently readily available in New York delis, but I haven’t had the pleasure until now. Dr. Brown’s is a Pepsi brand, but despite it’s big-bev lineage, this has a one-of-a-kind taste. As my colleague Dan Shepelavy described it, “this is everything Dr. Pepper aspires to be.” I imagine this would be fantastic with the Duane Purvis All-American Peanut Butter Burger.
Rating: Five caps. La’chaim!
Let’s pair a coupla root beers up against one another, and see who comes out on top, shall we?
On the left, Jackson Hole Soda Company’s unfortunately-named “Buckin’ Rootbeer.” On the right, Stewart’s, an Ohio/Mid-Atlantic classic.
Despite the stupid name and this website, Buckin’ whooped the pants off of Stewart’s, with a full flavor compared to Stewart’s relatively bland, HFCS taste.
Reviews (out of five caps)
Jackson Hole Buckin’ Rootbeer: 4
Stewart’s: 2
I have to admit, I didn’t expect much from Bulldog Root Beer. The label on this particular bottle was pretty beat up, and it had a best-by date of “S9B,” but I was drawn in by the promise of cane sugar, honey, maltodextrin (another sweetener) and, for the first time, SALT. The taste was superbly well-balanced, with a strong hit of vanilla that may have been brought out by the salt. No head retention whatsoever, but I’ll overlook that ’cause the taste was that good. Am I really writing about soda like a wine snob? Anyway, I’m gonna put this on on the recommended list. Will buy this one again if I see it.
Rating: Five caps out of five.
I’ll fess up: long nights at the office, a kitchen remodel, a summer vacation, and a foray into HGH injections and Shake Weights took my eyes off the sweet prize. Let’s put all that behind us and get back to brewing some root beer.
To get things back on track, let’s have a taste of something I poured while stripping two layers of 50-year-old linoleum.
Cool Mountain Gourmet Soda Root Beer out of Des Plaines, Illinois. Their news section of Web site hasn’t been updated since 2004. Suddenly taking a month off doesn’t feel so bad.
The verdict: cane sugar was too sweet and overpowering. Taste was fairly typical of a middle-of-the-road soda.
The rating: 2 out of 5 caps.
Have no fear. The root beer project is still alive and well. We’re just remodeling the kitchen, so we’ve been cooking out of a microwave and toaster oven for the past few weeks. But exciting developments are afoot. In the meantime, look out for a few upcoming reviews–including a visit to an Amish farm where they brew their own.
Forgot to post this when I was there a few weeks back, but I got a chance to try the all-natural ginger ale at Big Bowl in Chicago. This ain’t Canada Dry: fresh ginger, and I’m pretty sure cane sugar. Very sweet, very refreshing. I’m sure this would be the perfect base for some great cocktails. Which, by the way, they happen to mix up (but I didn’t try).
UPDATE: after my original review (below), Mark–one of the owners of Maine Root–got in touch, worried that I had gotten a bad batch. He promised to send me a six-pack, I promised I’d give it another try.
Seems Mark was right. Maybe the original Maine Root I purchased sat too long on the shelf, because my new bottles actually tasted like a drinkable beverage.
To be fair to Maine Root, I drank several bottles on different occasions, the verdict: the root beer is adequately carbonated, and starts rather sugary–a bit too much for my taste. The flavor is mildly spiced, but it was difficult to discern any particular ingredients. Typical root beer (wintergreen) taste, but I found it hard to pull out any noticeable vanilla or spice. A bit above average, but nothing of note to really grab me. Maybe the sweetness overpowered the taste, which one the whole was rather thin. So the final, final rating on Maine Root? 3 out of 5.
The original review follows.
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Any college kid who’s ever jammed their roommate’s Accord key into the base of a can could tell you a story about that one beer that was so tongue-numbingly awful it was rendered undrinkable.
For me, it was a little beer called Bird’s Brew. Never ran into before or since my Junior year at Lehigh, but when we stumbled upon it at our local distributor, we thought we had found alcoholic nirvana. Should have been tipped off by the cartoon bird in a green football uniform on the can. Or the disclaimer that it was “not affiliated with any NFL franchise.” Or the starburst proclaiming “1989 Season” (this was 1991). Or the fact that it was $3—a case! Our stomach got bigger than our eyes. And we bought a pallet of it. That’s right: 90 cases. 2,160 cans.
I knew on the first sip that it was garbage. So did anyone we tried to pawn it off to. As bitter as Buddy Ryan. It got to the point where we resorted to throwing unopened cans at the rival frat down the hill in an effort to rid ourselves of our enormous mistake. Even as we ran out of our normal standby, Carling Black Label, guys were resorting to drinking a who-knows-how-old bottle of Sloe Gin we found in a broom closet before we’d crack another can of this swill.
I had forgotten all about Bird’s Brew (so did The Internet, apparently) until I had a taste of Maine Root Root Beer.
Maine Root proudly proclaims that it’s topped off with “Fair Trade Certified organic cane juice,” with “handcrafted ingredients” and “filtered pure water” (as opposed to that Love Canal groundwater I guess the other brewers use).
Props for going the organic route, but this stuff is just plain awful. Pours like root beer. Looks like root beer. But doesn’t smell or taste like root beer. I can’t even describe it, ’cause I poured it out after a single sip. Who pours out a soda? Hell, I even gave that Pepsi and coffee thing a full bottle taste test a few years back. Not this stuff.
I needed a shock to my system after this tasting, so I went with a good ol’ Kutztown Sarsaparilla (which my son calls “Fast Gorilla”). At least the town of my wife’s alma mater knows how to make a proper soda.
This is more like it.
Maine Root Review: 0 out of 5 caps. The Bird’s Brew of Root Beers.
