GourmetRootBeer

Red Hare Root Beer

Jan 032024

Last month I was in Atlanta for my final work trip of the year. It’s been a rather busy one with over 100,000 miles of air travel and probably two full months in hotels. But anyhow, I was finally done but had one last DERMS hurrah to be made in a new city so once again ended up dragging my coworkers out for a brew. The Red Hare Brewing and Distilling have a brewery and a still in Atlanta, and one was rather close to my hotel. They don’t really have an “about” section that I could find on their website so I couldn’t tell you much about them other than that. But they also make a root beer and a grapefruit soda and serve them on tap. Their food was all Cuban themed, which is not what I expected from a brewery/still in Georgia, but that’s what it was.

The Body is sweet and rich with a classic, yet complex flavor. There’s a bit of licorice but not much, a bit of vanilla too, but not quite as much as I’d prefer. It is well balanced and quite delicious. The Bite is spicy and fizzy and really delivers. The Head is short and fizzes down too fast but doesn’t completely fizz away, so that you still get foam throughout the whole drinking experience, which is just barely enough Head. The Aftertaste is sweet and mild and pleasant. Not really much of one thing nor another but farewell to the draught you’ve just had, making you want another.

Nice! It’s been awhile since I had a draft brew that made me want seconds, so this was quite welcome. I wish it had a big more Head, but all considered, this is a solid brew I’d recommend to anyone. Their Cuban food was really good too, and the portion size is enormous. So check this place out if you’re in Atlanta.

**My Cuban Salmon Bowl with our appetizers and the Root Beer. It was a good meal**

**The Red Hare Taps, Root Beer on the far right**

Weis Handcrafted Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers No Responses »

Dec 062023

I got this off of a trade with that great root beer reviewer anthony. Weis is a store chain founded in 1912 in Pennsylvania. They currently have expanded into Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and West Virginia, nowhere near where I live. I am, however, once again very pleased to see store brands carrying glass bottled gourmet root beer. The bottle looks the sort of generic that you’d expect from a store brand, brown root beer color with a barrel on it. I like it, obviously, because I like root beer. A curious thing about this is in the ingredients. They list “citric acid powder”, which is the first time I’ve ever seen that. I see citric acid a lot as an ingredient, but never in powdered form. Is it required to specify which form is used? I muse on this as there’s not much else to talk about with this one, other than the brew itself.

The Body is sweet and creamy with a lot of vanilla. It’s quite pleasant but there’s a hint of something a little out of place. The Bite is mild on spice, decently prickly, but not overly smooth in the finish. The Head is medium and fizzes down relatively quickly. The Aftertaste is sweet vanilla and ends with the faintest hint of that out of place flavor.

This is unexpectedly good for a store brand, I’ll say that. There’s nothing really unique but it does generic really well. It’s not quite good enough for a Seal, sadly, but better than most store brands out there, which is an accomplishment they can feel proud of. See how it rates against other root beers.

Restoration Pizza Root Beer

Draft and Keg Root Beers No Responses »

Nov 012023

Back in August I found myself in Albuquerque for the final end of my project. If you’ve been following you’ll know that I’ve found several brews down there but I had hopes I could find another one. I searched for a couple of days, reaching out to every brewery and distillery I could find online, but no luck, so by Wednesday I’d given up on root beer and we decided to hit our favorite pizza join, Restoration Pizza. If you can’t get a new root beer, at least you can get an amazing pizza with green chile. When the waitress asked what we wanted to drink, we asked what kind of root beer they served. She informed us that they make their own. Well that blew me away. How’d I missed that? They’d just started making it a mere two months before. How serendipitous for me. Now I could have my pizza and my root beer too. The question is, how was it?

The Body is weak, not very sweet nor creamy and a little bitter wintergreen. The Bite is mild but not smooth. It could use more spice. The Head is short and foams away by the time they bring it out to you. The Aftertaste is milde and sort of bitter. There’s a little bit of caramel flavor to it though.

Yeah, this is not really a very good root beer at all. Hopefully they are still trying to improve their recipe because it does need some work. Their pizza is still amazing so I definitely recommend visiting, but maybe skip this, unless they make it better.

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