On my recent trip to San Diego for the IEEE Power and Energy Society General Meeting I had two main root beer goals, acquire Old Town D-n-A Root Beer and visit the San Diego Brewing Company, which is the only brewery in the area that makes their own root beer. They’re located over 5 miles from the hotel where I was at, but I rented a car for a day to visit my Aunt in Escondido and this was along the way. What a perfect place for lunch. This time I didn’t say who I was or what I was doing, because frankly, I would prefer to keep anonymity until after I know that I like the stuff. Trashing someone’s creation may be fun over the internet, but I’d rather not do it in person in their establishment if I can avoid it. This time I was extremely glad I did.
This has a medium, dark body that is rather spicy with licorice and wintergreen hints. The licorice flavor isn’t too strong but it is noticeable. The overall flavor reminds me of generic root beer flavor candy. The Bite is sharp and strong from cloves and carbonation. I wish it were toned down a bit. The Head is non-existent, even when the waitress tried to pour it from the tap in such a way to build the largest Head possible, there was nothing. The Aftertaste is wintergreen and licorice with accents of clove.
This really reminds me of the Snoqualmie Falls Brewing Root Beer, but with lighter flavors and no Head at all. It is just a little better than the generic stout root beer from the added cloves but not really anything special at all. When informed that there were no free refills, I opted for water for the rest of my meal, this wasn’t a root beer I’d ever pay for again. The food on the other hand was fabulous. The Cajun blackened guacamole pepper-jack burger with a side of sweet potato fries was extremely flavorful and well portioned. That might be worth another visit some day, but I’ll pass on the root beer.
My guacamole burger with sweet potato fries.
The Root Beer tap on the wall
My son, like most little boys, loves trains. This matters because Snoqualmie, WA has a historic train museum that includes a train ride from the historic depot. We had always thought it would be fun to take him there since we always drive through Snoqualmie on the way to my parents house. Then, I discovered Snoqualmie had a brewery that makes their own root beer, and only a block away from the museum. We quickly planned a family outing to see trains and drink root beer. The night before we went, we discovered that it was “A day with Thomas” at the museum, featuring a life sized Thomas the Tank Engine that would pull the train ride instead of the normal engine. Of course it was much more expensive (and a shorter ride) but with all of the additional events that were happening we were glad we went then. After a whole morning of riding trains, looking at trains, taking pictures of trains, and playing with model trains, we went to the brewery for lunch. Of course, I had to start by reviewing their root beer.
So this is my first Draft and Keg Root Beers review to not appear as a bonus review, and I think that all of the others will be Wednesday reviews as well. I’m sorry, there’s only a finite amount of root beers in the world and even fewer bottled ones so I need to keep the regular pace as much as possible. I was down in San Francisco taking care of some business and then decided to go down to San Jose to visit an old college room mate who was also the best man at my wedding. My scouring of the internet revealed that 
