Eric’s Gourmet Root Beer Blog – Page 4 – The blog of the gourmet root beer site.

Old 121 Root Beer

Dec 042024

My 500th root beer! I can’t believe that the journey I started in 1998 would lead me to so many amazing brews and now here I am with 500 done. I tried to make this a special review, because, I didn’t want just any old random bottle of root beer in my fridge (which I’ve been sitting on for 2 months now). While this isn’t some storied, legendary root beer I’ve forever been questing for, I did review it on election night on November 5th, which is pretty epic one way or another. I was traveling and in Golden Colorado and was looking for something local and found the Old 121 Brewhouse which makes their own root beer and one other flavor of soda. That one was coconut cream soda. It’s also a woman owned brewery so, appropriate because there was a woman on the ballot? I’m not getting any more political than that. I don’t endorse candidates unless they have public pro root beer policies like, um … Hank’s is the best root beer or there needs to be a White House Root Beer Sommelier or root beer subsidies or something like that, which doesn’t happen, so yeah. Anyways, it was an epic night for an epic 500th review.

The Body is sweet with sassafras and hints of wintergreen and vanilla. It’s got a sort of darker take on the classic flavor profile. The Bite is smooth but a little prickly. There isn’t a lot of spice. The Head is nice medium height and solidly foamy, which is rather rare for breweries lately. The Aftertaste is slightly bitter from wintergreen that finishes with tinges of vanilla.

This is decent. It’s a tasty one that doesn’t really stand out much but isn’t bad at all. It’s a little better than average the sort of root beer everyone will enjoy. It’d go well with food but they don’t really do meals there, just some snacks. I also tried their coconut cream soda because, why not, and that was also tasty. So, ultimately fun, but nothing crazy mind blowing, like maybe also the election, no matter what happens there’s always another one in another four years, just like there’s always another root beer for me to review.

The Old 121 Brewhouse taps. Root Beer second from the left.

The Old 121 brewing vats. The root beer is made by the smallest one on the far right.

The Old 121 Brewhouse on a snowy election night.

Hank’s Gourmet Root Beer

Bottled Root Beers No Responses »

Nov 062024

I made a mistake 13 years ago. Back when I held my Ultimate Root Beer Showdown I said that Hank’s seemed better than I remembered. At that time I knew the bottle had changed, but I didn’t actually realized that they’d made a subtle change to both their recipe (substituting cane sugar for high fructose corn syrup) and their name (substituting Gourmet for Premium). What I thought was the Hank’s I’d reviewed in 1998 was actually a technically new root beer. I’d like to think that after seeing such a high ranking at gourmetrootbeer.com they strove to make their premium root beer even better, worthy of truly being, “Gourmet”, and renamed the brew once they’d achieved it. Regardless, change their recipe and name they did, and thus a new root beer I need to review. Since I’ve been drinking Hank’s continuously since then, the review itself comes as no surprise but I shall write it as if it did.

Sweet mother of root beer! This has an amazing Body. How root beer should taste. It’s sweet and rooty and creamy and spicy. It’s perfectly proportioned with nothing lacking. The Bite is solid but not overbearing. The Head is tall and foamy as a root beer should be. The Aftertaste is luscious vanilla that lasts the perfect amount of time.

I really, truly, love this stuff. It is perhaps as close to perfection as we can come in this imperfect world. See how it rates against other root beers.

Rattlesnake Mountain Brewing Company Root Beer

Draft and Keg Root Beers No Responses »

Oct 022024

Back in July I went out to the TriCities for a work conference. It felt good to be back in my home turf, having grown up in that area. Since it had been a few years since I’d been there, I figured it was worth trying for more root beer. I found, though not through their official site, that Rattlesnake Mountain Brewing Company made their own root beer, but tries to keep it a secret, evidently. I only learned of its existence through a review that someone left about them. I called and they confirmed it existed, but when I finally got there, it wasn’t even on the menu. I felt like part of an exclusive club at that point, you gotta know about it or they won’t even tell you. Another interesting thing is that, if you know the local geography, you’ll immediately notice that this brewery is much much closer to Badger Mountain than Rattlesnake Mountain, but there already is a Badger Mountain Brewing though that isn’t anywhere near this Badger Mountain, so maybe there’s more than one Badger Mountain in the same state? I think I’ve really strayed from my root beer story. So anyways, I showed up with a crew in tow of coworkers and customers and we sat down and they informed us trivia was going to start and if we wanted to play. So we were all like, “sure” then they wanted a name for our team, my coworkers looked to me but I replied, “I don’t know, I’m in a root beer mindset.” And thus team Root Beer Mindset was born. So while I got to reviewing this brew, I would interject answers to the surprise of the team “Anne of Green Gables”, “Baltic Sea”, “Weird Al Yankovic”, “Bushido code”, etc.

The Body is sweet and complex with a sassafras and licorice flavor with a little vanilla and wintergreen coming through. The licorice is very tame, just enough to add but not anywhere near overpowering. The Bite is nice and spicy and prickly but it still is rather smooth on the finish. The Head is non-existent. This is very sad. The Aftertaste has a caramelized sugar with a bit of licorice.

It’s a good complex flavor, but that utter lack of head really ruins it, which is sad. It was still quite nice and went really well with the apps we got. We also managed to win trivia, surprisingly, making this for quite the night for all involved.

**The Rattlesnake Mountain Brewing Company**

**Some bacon wrapped jalapeno popper things that were amazing.**

Older Entries Newer Entries