Across the Puget Sound from my home is the city of Silverdale and the Silver City Brewery. They’re unique from the other breweries that also do root beer in that they use it in their cooking and are proud of it. They make a root beer barbeque sauce and use it on their baby back ribs and their pulled pork sandwich for example. But that’s not all, they also have a “BBQ Root Beer Burger” on the menu, which has bacon, onion rings, lettuce, tomato, and lots of the root beer BBQ sauce. Now that’s what I like to see. Name your burger after the root beer. There should be more of that. Back in June, on a nice sunny Saturday, my family and I took the 1 hour ferry (our first time) across the Sound to Bremerton to try out this brew and the food made with it.
The Body has a sweet honey and sarsaparilla flavor that’s a little weaker than I prefer. It isn’t really creamy either and is almost fruity. There’s is a good carbonation fizz in the Bite but not a lot of spice. It’s very smooth going down. There is almost no Head, sadly, which always surprises me from a draft brew. The Aftertaste is more honey with sarsaparilla that lasts the right amount of time.
Not bad at all, in fact, it’s pretty decent. It’s not my preferred flavors though and I wish it were a little stronger. Plus it losses some points on the Head, but it’s drinkable and goes really well with the BBQ Root Beer Burger. That burger is delicious! One of the best brewery burgers I’ve ever had. I LOVE their root beer barbeque sauce. So sweet and tangy and spicy. The ribs are really good too and the portions are large. You’ll definitely leave feeling satisfied, unless you really just wanted a Seal of Approval brew. Otherwise, if you’re in the Seattle area, the trip, with the wonderful views on the ferry and food, is well worth it.
The Silver City Brewery BBQ Root Beer Burger
Baby back ribs with root beer barbecue sauce.
Ferrying through the Puget Sound on a quest for root beer!
Way back in mid April my wife said that she wanted to go to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. It’s over an hour drive north so I said that I’d look into it. I immediately started looking to see if there was any breweries with root beer. Ironically, the Skagit River Brewery was right there, but I’d just reviewed it a mere two weeks before. None of the others seemed to have any but I sent out emails. La Conner Brewing Company responded that they made their own and served it tapped out of the brew vats. Well that settled it, we were going to Tulip Festival! We took the morning and went to Tulip Town and I was completely amazed at the acres and acres of blooming tulips. The day was beautiful and we spent several hours walking in the field and took a tractor ride. Then we drove another 10 minutes, past more tulip fields, to La Conner for lunch. The first thing I did was order a root beer, no ice, lots of Head.
So back in March I found myself in Salt Lake City again to give another seminar on electric vehicles. This time it was at the University of Utah. I’d hit the area pretty hard back in February but was certain that there was some gourmet root beer left to be found. Sure enough, a devoted web search revealed Red Rock Brewery where they make their own root beer and cream soda. As soon as I landed and got the rental car, I knew where I was heading. I took a seat at the bar and ordered a pint, no ice, lots of foam.
