Another brew from the well traveled Red Hunt who sent it from the Mystic Land of the North (Canada). True story, his original shipment got lost in customs and never made it. A whole six months later he tried again, and interestingly the original shipment showed up on his doorstep. When I look at this brown bottle of Babbling Brooke’s brew featuring a barrel, it reminds me of a book I used to love when I was little, The B Book, where the whole thing was very long sentences with every word starting with the letter B. Like “Big brown bear, beautiful blue baboon, blowing bubbles biking backwards…” and so on. This root beer is all natural, old fashioned, and even traditional according to the label. It’s made by the Nickle Brook Brewery and evidently the people in the barrel are Nick and Brook. It’s got some interesting ingredients like burdock root and orange peel so I wasn’t too sure what to expect.
The Body is very dark and complex. There’s licorice and burdock in addition to the sassafras that give way to some wintergreen and a bit of vanilla and cinnamon. It also has molasses hints and is kind of bitter. Despite the cinnamon, there really isn’t much bite. It’s more a cinnamon flavor than any burn. The Head is short yet frothy and lingers. The Aftertaste is licorice, wintergreen, and cinnamon that lasts too long and ends bitter.
It’s different but not terrible. It is however too dark a flavor for my tastes. I’ll end with a B Book style sentence of my own about this root beer. Babbling Brooke’s brother’s big brown brew barrel bobbed buoyantly beyond blue birch barns, beneath bonded brick bridges; by black badgers, buzzing bees, bitty bats, braying breeds, barking beagles, bereaved beavers; behooved by boastful brew bloggers bemoaning bitter burdock brews bought behind Billy Bob’s biker bar by bellowing bad Betty before breakfast. See how it rates against other root beers.
