Pizza Port House Root Beer

 Draft and Keg Root Beers  No Responses »
Aug 052026
 

Back in May I was in San Diego, working, DERMSing, and also, visiting my Aunt Mom. I call her my Aunt Mom because she’s my Mom’s identical twin and she does look and sound uncannily like my mom. It is a strange experience growing up having a parent with a twin. Anyways, enough of that. Pizza Port. We met up and decided to go there because I’d known about Pizza Port for awhile now but had never the time to get there. Sometimes I’m far too busy to take an excursion. This time I wasn’t. Pizza Port is a small pizza and brewery chain around the San Diego area. The owners have been running it since 1987 with focus on great pizza and house brewed beers, for which they’ve won quite a few rewards. They also brew a house root beer, which my Aunt and cousins and I went to try along with some pizza.

The Body is sweet but not too sweet with a solid sassafras core that just, is. There aren’t a lot of other flavors in there. There’s Bite though, it’s spicy, but other than sassafras and those Bite spices, it’s just, plain. The Head is very short but it does maintain a slight ring of foam around the rim. The Aftertaste is light and then gone quickly.

This root beer is all core and no accents. It’s perfectly generic yet not at all unpleasant. It complements their pizza extraordinarily well and though I didn’t get one of their root beer floats, I imagine that a scoop of quality vanilla ice cream would make a heavenly float. So while it isn’t the best root beer by any means, it’s quite a well designed root beer for a meal/float option. The specialty pizza options are pretty impressive and the Meet Extreme Meat pizza we got was just amazing.

Three kegs

The Meet Extreme Meat Pizza

Faxon Farms Maple Root Beer

 Bottled Root Beers  No Responses »
Jul 012026
 

Minnesota has this thing called The Renaissance Festival, or Ren Fest for short. My family likes to attend because you can watch jousting while eating giant smoked turkey legs and do other fun activities and buy things at shops and dress up like a knight and whatnot. Last year, my sister found this being sold in one of the shops and bought me a bottle to review. I always appreciate people finding me new root beers. Faxon farms is a local producer of pure maple syrup that got started out of a hobby in 2010. They’ve expanded operations over the years to not just make pure maple syrup but also pure maple syrup products, including this root beer. I do love small farm maple syrup, being a hobbyist myself. I also love a good maple root beer.

The Body has a rich maple flavor with honey but quite mild on the rest of the root beer flavors. It starts strong but doesn’t maintain. The Bite is smooth, not really any spices. The Head is very short, gone quickly. Not quite the “2-Second Head”, but close. The Aftertaste is maple. Good maple. Quality maple, but that’s it.

This has a great maple, but not not so much a great root beer. I find that happens often, with maple or other flavored root beers. You make an amazing maple syrup, you want to make that into an amazing root beer, but you are not a root beer expert so you lean into your strength. You can’t just take a root beer and add maple, or even a good root beer and add maple, but you need to formulate what will be an amazing root beer because of its maple. That’s hard to do. As it stands, the delicious maple makes for a drinkable root beer, but not much else. See how it rates against other root beers.

Three kegs

Ancestry Draft Root Beer

 Draft and Keg Root Beers  No Responses »
Jun 032026
 

Back in February I was in Portland doing what I do best, DERMSing. This wasn’t the first time I’ve been to Portland for such reasons. In fact I was there fall of last year, when I was doing my crazy travel schedule. I had checked near my hotel, in Tualatin, and found Ancestry brewing back then, but I was with quite a few coworkers and we were in a hurry so I filed it away as something to hit for the next trip, which trip was this February. That’s a long way of saying I was expecting to hit this place up. We actually barely made it in time to order dinner and the root beer.

The Body is sweet and rich with some vanilla and wintergreen. It’s a pretty typical flavor profile about halfway between a creamy classic and a dark old fashioned that just tastes like good root beer. The Bite is mild and smooth with a little carbonation prickle slight spice. The Head is medium tall with good staying power. The Aftertaste is sweet with a bit of vanilla but not much.

There’s nothing that really stands out on this but it’s a good total package. Better than average and plenty fine with the meal of fish and chips with some pretzel bites. I got a second pint after all. So check it out. It’s a fine place.

Three and a half kegs

Fish and chips with pretzel bites in a beer cheese dip. Quite delicious

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