The final brew from my journey to UT and the only one in a bottle. I snagged four bottles of it on my way to the Salt Lake airport making 4 new root beers in a three day trip. I must say this was the most successful trip yet as far as root beer is concerned. Brigham’s Brew is brewed by Wasatch Brewery and to my knowledge is the only root beer to be named after religious leader (unless there’s some Innocent XII brew I’ve heretofore missed), taking the celebrity root beer names to a whole new level. I find it ironic that a root beer named after the second Mormon Prophet, Brigham Young, would be made by non-Mormons (this is, of course, assuming that owning a brewery precludes one from also being in full fellowship with the church) but then again he was also the first Governor of Deseret (Utah before it was a state) so they’re probably just tipping their hats to Utah’s founder. Plus, if their brewery had been around then, the root beer would have been the only one that Brigham Young would have drank. That’s actually a really good marketing strategy. Maybe we’ll see founders’ brews from other major religions that forbid alcohol in their holy cities someday.
The Body is rich and creamy. A delicious honey flavor greats your tongue and then introduces it to luscious vanilla. A little wintergreen surfaces later to accent the rest of the standard root beer flavors making the perfect soiree in your mouth. There’s a solid bite from spice and carbonation, but the maltodextrin ensures that it is a very smooth affair. The Head is excellent. It almost fizzed over the top of my mug with each pouring. It dissipates faster than some of the other greats though, and is probably the only drawback. The Aftertaste is creamy vanilla and wintergreen with honey accents showing up just as the other two flavors exit.
Wow! I was expecting good but not such a superb brew! I wish I had purchased more bottles. This is hands down one of the best root beers I’ve ever had. So nice to have my trip end with the best. Truly, this is the highest compliment a brewer could pay to Brother Brigham. See how it rates against other root beers.
First of all, I don’t know why they put a ‘-‘ in between ‘root’ and ‘beer’ on their label. They don’t hyphenate it on their website so I’m going to guess that they’re trolling grammar Nazis with the label. Also, it is interesting to find an old time root beer since most often people say their brew is old fashioned. I wonder if anyone will ever make a new time or a new fashioned (latest fashion?) root beer. Their website is thick with the standard old fashioned rhetoric even throwing in mention to grandpa. Since every old fashioned root beer seems to be very different, I’m going to venture that each brew is talking about a different grandpa. They also claim that “Millstream Old Time Root Beer is brewed to satisfy the most discriminating root beer connoisseur” which I am so let’s see.
It’s nice to see that even the tiny state of Rhode Island can get their own brand of root beer, and an Olde one at that, even if it is made by Empire Bottling Works. In fact they’re so olde they don’t even have a website. They’re so olde that their New England recipe is just old in comparison. They’re so olde that their label looks as though it’s as olde as the company, or that they spilled some root beer on it. And they’re so olde that they don’t even care. They don’t have to, because once you become so old that you’re olde, you’ve moved beyond such things.