Mt. Angel Brewing Company is unique in that it is a soda brewery. They brew sodas and only sodas which can be purchased in either bottles or various keg sizes. Their original flavor was their Old Fashioned Root Beer though they’ve since expanded to unique flavors like Marionberry and Hazelnut as well as the more traditional Orange Cream. They’ve won several awards for their brew. They took the Silver Metal at 2012 National Open Root Beer Competition (a category of the National Open Beer Competition), where the Gold and Bronze went to Seal of Approval brews so I was excited to get this to say the least. Getting it was a bit of a pain even though it’s only about a 4 hour drive to their brewery. I didn’t want to mail order it at first, hoping I’d be down there for some reason or another, but eventually I got around to getting my two bottles. Their motto is “Venite et Gaudete” which is “Come and Rejoice” The motto seems to be on a seal of some sort which only appears on their labels, the website is quite mute on the subject.
The Body has a rich strong minty flavor with a hint of fruity. It isn’t really creamy and is a tad bitter and sticky. The Bite is pretty non-existent. There’s a little carbonation tingle and the slightest mint burn but really nothing. The Head is short, very short, but frothy. The Aftertaste is very minty and a little bitter and fruity.
So this root beer really reminds me of Ozark Mountain, minus the creamy vanilla and the beautiful Head. They even both have green labels. While the creamy minty brews are a favorite of mine, this only has the minty part of the equation. Then that hint of fruity detracts and the Head is poor. In fact on the second bottle I tried, the Head was non-existent but I gave them the benefit of the doubt and rated it with the Head from the first bottle, which was still really short. All in all, it’s a decent brew but not one of my favorites by any means. See how it rates against other root beers.
Deep in the heart of New Hampshire the five generations of the Conner family have at the Conner Bottling Works churning out Squamscot Old Fashioned Beverages. They called their label Squamscot because, why not? They have 22 different flavors including Fruit Bowl, Yup, and Half and Half, the latter of which sounds absolutely awful, unless they make a coffee soda to mix with it (imitation flavors of course, I don’t drink coffee). The label is very plain and kind of reminds me of the Avery’s label but thankfully they use a few different colors and don’t recycle letters. I’m not sure why they insist on everything being written in a different font but that seems to afflict a lot of small bottlers. Whenever I get a new root beer I think to myself, “this could be the best root beer ever.” This time, I couldn’t have been more wrong.
This has a really cool bottle. I’ve never seen another bottle like it. It’s really neat when a company has their own unique bottle. It’s a classy bottle as well. With the diamonds, the embossed name, and the short stubby look to it. The label is even painted on, so it makes me wonder if they still reuse their bottles. The company is Canadian in origin whose founders seem to be anti-hippies according to their website which is more to their credit. Their original gimmick was that they would have their own pop outlets to cut out the middle man and reduce prices. While it worked for awhile they were eventually bought and now, thankfully, you can get them through other distributors, which is how I cam across this on.
