My uncle brought this up from California one visit after I’d been reviewing for about a year. At the time Trader Joe’s wasn’t near as spread as it is now and I had never even heard of it. For some reason all I could think of was “Hey Joe, what do you know?” I still actually think about that anytime I see this bottle. It’s got a sort of surfer theme on the label, which is similar to what you’ll actually find in the Trader Joe’s stores. As expected from them, this is all natural without any preservatives or artificial flavors. However, it still has HFCS because avoiding those wasn’t trendy in the late 90s. It’s also “Premium Draught Style” making it one of only three other brews to use the olde spelling of draft. Reading further in their flavor text explains that it is “turn-of-the-century style” Evidently their thesaurus has Premium Draught as a synonym for turn-of-the-century.
It has a nice Body, Bite, and Aftertaste, but is lacking in Head. There is absolutely nothing special about this.
Drinking this is whelming, and dare I say, ceptional leaning heavily towards quite adequate. I might also describe it as credible, ordinary, markable, and standing. Basically I would put this as the stereotypical gourmet root beer and say that this stuff is completely average for me. It could be much worse but also much better. Congrats Trader Joe’s on a job done. See how it rates against other root beers.
I know it doesn’t say “Springs” on the bottle but the people who make it insist on calling it that. You’d think they’d put the name on the bottle but no, why would they do something easy and consistent like that? That brings me to wonder about all of the root beers named after springs. It usually has something to do with the soda works’ water supply, but not for this one. This one is actually bottled by Natrona. It has the same slightly too tall, slightly not enough root beer as the 
This past Friday my parents were visiting for the Labor Day weekend. I decided that we should all take a ferry ride to Bremerton because it is an awesome ride. The question arose of what to do when we got there and well, I figured we’d go and get some root beer and have lunch. I decided to check if there was any new place that I’d missed and the lovely Google Maps showed Slaughter County Brewing Company in Port Orchard. I called them and asked if they made their own root beer and they said that they did. Therefore, that’s where we went for lunch. The whole place is very pirate themed, with skulls and skeletons and cannons and ships and whatnot. It’s got personality like few places ever do. They run on a skeleton crew, so you order at the bar and then they bring it up to you. We got six root beers, one for each of us, and then I got to reviewing.
