I take issue with the name of this root beer. I know it’s cliche to call your product world famous, but if the people who’s primary reason for existence have a hard time learning about your product, it isn’t world famous. Small gripe I know, but of all the “world famous” type products I’ve ever heard of, this is probably the most obscure. I heard about it from anthony who found it trawling Amazon. The label also screams private label, but anthony assures me that when he reached out to the Great and Glorious Todd he said they have their own special recipe. I will believe him, GinsengUp does do custom recipes. I have another gripe about this brew. It came mailed to me using USPS Flat Rate padded envelopes as the padding in the box they used to package it. Seriously? They were too cheap to buy bubble wrap? Decided to raid the local post office after hours for the “free” envelopes whose cost is baked into the packaging and just use it to stuff your root beer mailing box. It rather sours me on them as a company. They can of course redeem themselves completely with a good brew.
The Body is sweet with a bit of vanilla, some sarsaparilla and a bit of sour. It’s rather generic other than that and the sour doesn’t help. The Bite is prickly from carbonation with a sudsy mouthfeel. There’s but little spice. The Head is tall and frothy, full points there. The Aftertaste is faint sour and sarsaparilla.
Meh. It’s okay, nothing special. That sour in the brew ruins it like their behavior sours my opinion of them overall. So yeah, skip this, if for no other reason than to support your local post office. But I must admit, in a pinch, it’s drinkable. See how it rates against other root beers.
When I was at Blue Sun getting one of the most perplexing yet delicious brews (Lemon Root Beer?) I also stumbled across this. Mother Road isn’t exactly brand new. It’s Filbert’s except with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. Now those two things do taste different and can make a difference in a root beer. I’m actually quite please with Filbert’s, for rather than change their original product which may anger their old fans, they just made a whole new soda line for the cane sugar recipes. This is even better because people like me have no issue reviewing a new root beer with a new label and name and only one different ingredient, then going back and reviewing again the same root beer even though it changes. Yes, I really want everything in the (root beer) world to just be easily categorized. Anyhow, Mother Road is now the fifth brew with 
For the first time in awhile I went out to Blue Sun Soda. I’ve been trying to avoid in-person shopping as much as possible what with the pandemic. Plus it’s sad to me to go up there and not play video games and enjoy a phosphate. Any how, I went back, hunting for a different root beer (review coming next month) and when I asked them if they said they had anything new, they remarked that they’d just started making a lemon root beer. That sounds like a terrible idea to me. If you’ve read this blog much (or my reviews in general) you know my opinion of sour, citrusy, fruity flavors in my root beer. I’ve also not had the best experience with Whistler despite my love for what they do. To set my expectations even lower, when I posted about the new root beer on Facebook, the owner of Whistler commented that he himself didn’t like it but people kept asking for it so he made it. That’s actually hilarious and I told him to not take it bad if I panned it in my review. After all, would you be excited to drink something its own creator has dismissed as weird? But so I found myself filling my mug with a lemon scented brew.
