The second root beer of the Oak Creek Barrel Aged offering. This one’s a blonde root beer, one of the rarest forms of root beer I’ve ever encountered. Only two before this. Interestingly one of those also had a “creek” in the name, which surely can’t be a coincidence… This boasts on the label to be made with “25% brown sugar, 75% real sugar”. Now I think brown sugar is plenty real, especially since it’s just less refined. I get what they’re trying to say, but let’s not be calling brown sugar not real sugar. Saying regular or normal sugar also would seem a bit odd, so, they should change it to say “white sugar”. There I gave them some free marketing advice. Look at how kind I’m being. And why wouldn’t I be. This stuff is good.
The Body has a rich creamy vanilla flavor with a distinct woody flavor. It’s nice and sweet with a lot of complexity of flavors and spices beneath the initial contact. The Bite is sharp and spicy. The Head is as a proper root beer Head should be, tall and foamy. The Aftertaste is the woody, oaken vanilla that last just the right amount of time.
I like it. I like it a lot. I think the aged oaken flavor goes better in this blonde than it did in the regular. Mixes well with that fake sugar and all. So now I’ve reviewed three blonde root beers and given as many Seals, you could say that I’m partial to blonde root beers, but I would say that rather, the makers of such a unique take on root beer strive extra to craft a masterful product. And this is with out a doubt masterfully crafted. See how it rates against other root beers.
This brew is a long time in the making. I’ve known of the existence of this company for a long time, promising to take root beer crafting to the next level, the level reserved for fine wines, whiskeys, and balsamic vinegar, ageing it in oak barrels, but they were never quite ready to release it. Now, finally, after a much longer wait than the required aging process, the product is ready and has been released this year. The root beer ingredients, before adding sugar, are all barrel aged for a year. There’s something about just the concept of barrel aging that has me excited, like root beer is getting taken to the next level, getting the respect it finally deserves. This company is from Chicago and makes this root beer as well as a barrel aged blonde root beer (review next week). A phone conversation with the owner some years ago revealed that he also works with the 
Last week I was in Baltimore on business (at the time of writing this post and it’s going live, I’m back in Baltimore, but more on that next week?). There was of course, one thing I had to get, crab cakes! Ha, you thought I’d say root beer, which is also true, but, you know, nice lump Maryland crab cakes are kind of a must. I’d diligently searched for root beer but not found anything. So, after an early dinner, gorging myself on crab cakes and seafood, I settled into my hotel room, brushed my teeth, got in my PJs and was setting to watch some Anime and YouTube, and then I figured I should browse for root beer just a little longer. I noticed in one of the comments on one of the breweries the line “for a place that makes their own root beer” and realized my early evening of relaxing was over. There were brews to be had! Since I’d already brushed my teeth, I’d need to eat again so the root beer wouldn’t taste nasty, which resulted in my having a rather hobbitish evening of getting a supper after my dinner. The place in question is Pub Dog, a draft house/pizza joint with two locations in the Baltimore area. They give you all your drinks in pairs, which was interesting and led to a rather humorous happening of me saying I’d like a water too, getting two mugs of water, which made me try to clarify that I meant I wanted a water also, to which they responded by bringing me another two mugs of water. But they also brought me two mugs of root beer so after a few pizza slices, I was ready to get to reviewing.
