Last month I was up in Winnipeg for the first time in my life. I was there for DERMS, because what else would I be doing? I could just be road tripping, it’s not actually that far from home, but I wasn’t road tripping. Anyways, after doing my DERMS thing my coworker and I walked down to The Forks to see the sites. I love revitalized areas like that, where parks and shops and restaurants are in old brick and stone buildings built in centuries past. One of those restaurants is Wienerpeg, a most fabulously named hot dog place. Everyone who hears the name laughs, and with reason. It is pretty funny. I had made this restaurant our target since I knew that they also made a house brewed root beer, in addition to gourmet hot dogs and poutine. Which would be perfect for International Poutine Day, the day we were there. After checking out the shops we grabbed our order and went to review.
The Body is light and herbal with a prominent honey and sarsaparilla flavor. It’s one of those rare, herb tea root beer profiles which you wouldn’t recognize as root beer if you were blindfolded. The Bite has decent spice with okay carbonation. The Head is medium-short, and fizzes away a little too quickly. The Aftertaste is mild honey and herbs, which is quite pleasant but quite not like archtypical root beer.
An herb tea style root beer. I haven’t had one of those in awhile. I’m still not convinced that this a valid form of root beer, just too far outside of what you’d expect. I dare anyone to take a blind taste and say that such a brew is in fact a root beer, or what they expect a root beer to taste like. Anyways, it is a bit tasty and pleasant to drink and goes well with the hotdogs. I had their signature Wienerpeg one with some pulled pork poutine, that was quite excellent. This place is definitely worth a visit for the food.
